


The Case of the Second Slipper

by androsjanicek



Series: Red-Letter Cases of Sherlock Holmes [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1496458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/androsjanicek/pseuds/androsjanicek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes accepts a promising case from an emissary of the Vatican. Solving the mystery tests his allegiance with Watson and leads him to sink to the very depths of London's underworld. Holmes' journey provides glimpses into the detective's psychology and the society in which he lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There will be those who will not believe this tale. Some of them, because they feel they have gotten to know the subject of my chronicles, and believe he would never come to such a pass. Others, because this story touches upon shadowy realms that exist right in the midst of the world we know, and if we were to acknowledge them, our society might be overrun with something other than clarity. But I can assure you that I have recorded everything faithfully—even, as is my custom, that which I do not condone or understand. Sherlock Holmes had one more true failure than I had previously reported, in addition to the Irene Adler cases, and indeed, this failure came about as a result of that woman’s influence.

Some years ago, towards the beginning of our time sharing quarters and cases in Baker Street, Holmes was in one of his black moods. It was his longest prostration to melancholy since I’d known him. He had almost a dozen projects started and abandoned in his parlor, among them a complicated chemical experiment with tubes and beakers stretching across the dining-table. He had also pulled out his considerable collection of spent bullets and was adding to his interminable monograph on what could be learned from spent rounds.

At some point he had pulled out all of his unsolved cases and unapprehended criminals. At first he had little stations set up around the room dedicated to how he could have rubbed out each of these black spots upon his stellar record. There was a little shrine of newspaper clippings about the murderess Quimby located near the whiskey bottles, but that had long since joined all the other traces of Holmes’ past in a united specter of his own frailty.

It was useless to tell this exemplary man that even he was human, and what is human can never be perfect. This febrile intellect had gotten transfixed by its own workings, and I watched Holmes watch himself until he saw something ghastly. There, I could not follow him.

My old friend had gotten past the violin stage, which is my way of marking the point of true despair, the point at which I cease to sympathize as a friend and become his physician.

My patient sat so still he occasionally gave me a start, realizing he was there all along but I had forgotten him while weighing my next step. His usual imposing manner was gone, so I went ahead boldly. “Would you allow me to give you a prescription?”

The shadowed eyes barely glimmered with interest. “If you’ve changed your feelings about cocaine, perhaps we can indulge together. I value the drug as a way of attaining the most active kind of lethargy, a balance between extremes that cancels itself out. Mercifully. It would be enjoyable not to have to try and fail to put it into words for your sake.”

It was the most he’d said together in days, so I was heartened enough to say, “A tincture of _Hypericum perforatum_ is more indicated for someone in your situation. I have heard that when someone rises out of the depths of despair, it is a sort of intoxication, one that I would wish for you.”

His noble head sunk back into his chest. “If you really love me, Watson, you’ll find a nice crime to distract me. If you truly had affection for me, you’d set about committing a crime yourself. But one worthy of my attention, now, an infraction that is somehow just in its own way, one that will take all my ingenuity to keep you out of the gallows.”

“You have, on occasion, kept a person from further punishment when you felt that they had already paid for their crime,” I said, trying to keep his attention. “Could I count on the same treatment?”

“For you Watson, I know you have already paid the penance of ten men, simply by tolerating all my black humors and inscrutable whims.” The very tiniest of smiles was upon his lips for just a moment before being swallowed up in the blank expression that had occupied that usually mobile territory for days.

“If, and only if, my crime were just,” I mused, trying to continue Holmes’ fancy. “If I were to blackmail someone who was himself a blackmailer, or arrange an accident to befall a murderer.”

“Hopefully it would be something less obvious, but it would be an act of mercy indeed for you to allow me to feel the thrill of the chase once more.”

The bell rang, and we both perked up in hope that the very thing had arrived. Unfortunately, it was a case of a fiancé who had disappeared. The bride preferred to think he was kidnapped by marauders rather than face that he had simply jilted her.

The situation was painfully obvious to me, but Holmes’ eyes burned with futility. He turned around abruptly in what I knew to be desperation for some truly knotty problem rather than this single limp strand of a case.

The girl was none too pretty and doubtless had been thrown over by a young man who suddenly valued his freedom over her handsome pension. But to the poor creature, the detective’s brusque indifference was the last harsh gesture in the series of hurts that had seen the destruction of her dreams.

She burst into tears. Tea was rung for. I talked to her in my most soothing tone of voice for over half an hour while my friend darted looks of agony my way. By the end of it, I thought Holmes would be the next to need his hand stroked while I trotted out such obvious commonplaces that I was ashamed to hear them in my own voice.

At last, the girl was dispatched, finally willing to accept the great detective’s agitation as proof of his very real illness, which thus excused either of us from hunting down promised husbands.

I walked down the street to buy several of the foreign newspapers that Holmes usually keeps track of when he is well, though these might be added to the untouched pile in our parlor. My French is adequate but my knowledge of Spanish comes only by way of Latin. Thus, it was in a considerable state of excitement that I returned to our quarters waving Madrid’s daily, now several days out of date.

Sherlock Holmes barely looked up from where he was lining up the potatoes and carrots in his otherwise untouched bowl of soup.

“See anything interesting?” I asked, unfolding the front page on the table.

There was a long silence, and I thought he might have gotten distracted by his own poor Spanish. Then I heard, “A Spanish anarchist group claims to have stolen a very valuable cache of jewels, and the Spanish government denies the allegations. I know, it could be bravado on the part of the revolutionaries. But mark this well, Watson. The regime of Alfonso XIII, which, like its monarch, is in its infancy, did not say that they posses the jewels, safe and sound, in their vaults. They say something to the effect that, ‘We deny these allegations entirely.’ Or is it, ‘We have nothing to do with this matter?’ It will take some study to decode it, but I salute you for identifying this very promising matter.”

He held out his hand to shake mine, but I forced his finger to a small image on the lower part of the page.

“You have entirely missed the appearance of an old friend.” Then I read what I’d been able to gather from that brief article: “Irene Adler, wanted most urgently for questioning in relation to a theft. Reward offered, etc.”

Holmes’ eyes came alive, but he stayed very still, as if afraid to frighten away this precious development by moving too quickly.

I laid the newspapers on the chair next to his and began clearing up the worst of the mess while he was distracted. My friend gave in to curiosity shortly, and while he studied the papers I dared to put a dictionary nearby. He merely grunted, but in a few moments he’d deigned to touch that, too, and soon he was talking.

“Dr. Watson, we were both correct in the summaries of our respective articles—each of them compelling alone. But it is when considered together that a truly fascinating tableau begins to emerge. Have you ever known Ms. Adler to possess any politics?”

“Other than making sure she lands on her feet, no.”

“Precisely, good sir. This lady cares little of politics except that they make people behave irrationally, all the better to exploit to them her purposes. My early theory is that she was acting as a broker for some foreign power seeking to benefit from the civil unrest in that realm by acquiring some of the monarchy’s riches. The anarchists, very picturesquely named _La Mano Negra_ , the Black Hand, must have had a similar idea and stolen at least part of the treasure first.

“Since the actual thieves have already sold one of the pieces and claim to possess many more, Irene must not have won the prize this time, yet she’s become the scapegoat for the caper. Other than the fact that the king’s representatives will not discuss the subject at all, it seems to be a case of Irene needing to move very quickly to a change of scenery.”

His deductions ran out much more quickly than I had hoped from a sighting of Irene Adler.

“I’m sorry that it wasn’t much of a challenge after all.” Now I felt somewhat dejected, and I lit a cigarette to fill the suddenly empty afternoon.

“But it is, Watson. This promises some entertainment for the two of us.” Holmes was up and pacing around the room while gesturing with his pipe. “If she is the prime suspect—and what other wanted thief would make the front page, sir?—Irene must have gotten quite close to the jewels, or at least her intentions to steal them must have reached _La Mano Negra_. Your article said she was briefly detained, and no thief ever hopes to be touched by the law.”

“Good Lord.” My feelings towards Holmes’ muse were ambivalent, but I should not like to see her molder away in some Spanish jail. “Why do you say that she was in the employ of another? Ms. Adler doubtless prefers to be her own mistress.”

“It’s a queer business when the monarchy won’t acknowledge ownership of a store of priceless jewels, but I take it to mean there is some special consideration that only an outside influence would compel our heroine to take on.”

Holmes’ pacing turned a corner. “Her employer would have wanted nothing more to do with this failed thief except as a scapegoat, and yet she was held for questioning once before someone engineered her release on a technicality. The question is, where is Lady Irene, and what is she willing to do to see this matter safely behind her? The news reaches us so slowly.”

“You could send a telegram if you have contacts in Spain. Unless you’re up to traveling,” I suggested to him.

“I’m up for anything and everything, Watson. At all times,” said the man with a week’s worth of beard and soup all up his sleeve. “But it will be far more amusing to wait and see how long it takes the Irene Adler to reach out to me.”

I laughed at a wish run away with itself. “You think she would seek your services?” Irene Adler had toyed with Holmes on two occasions, but had never deigned to request his help.

“Not in as much, no, but she is aware that setting off a certain chain of events will put her in the scope of Scotland Yard, and then, if she is canny, it will be discarded as a matter of little interest by the police, and as such land in my lap.”

Holmes was warming to his theory, now, and though there were few facts to back it up, I wouldn’t interrupt him for the world. “She knows my morals to be unbending but highly idiosyncratic. And this is a lady who doubtless has information that could resolve three dozen of my most irritating unsolved crimes.” A nervous hand gestured at the shrines dotting the room. “That’s worth a passage on a ship bound away from Europe under a captain who owes me a favor or two.” Holmes rubbed his hands in anticipation.

A thin, pale detective was suddenly in fine form again, bustling around the parlor, shoving things in drawers and trunks if they were handy as if _la Adler_ were about to descend upon us at any moment. “Good heavens, Watson, you’ve let things go to seed! This won’t do to receive a lady, and what’s more a criminal of her distinction!”

An hour later, his exertions done, Holmes sank back in the chair that bore his narrow indentation, this time, like a snake waiting to strike. I could only watch the scene, hoping that such a nervous temperament would spend a little time in a happy medium before seeking the exaltation he requires.

Holmes fell asleep. I’d wager it’s the first natural sleep he’s known in some time, because the sachets I discreetly supply for that purpose were consumed without comment.

The next day there was no word, and the next, but Holmes was in good spirits, reading through the entire towering stack of foreign newspapers in the corner. He sent me out for history books referring not just to Spain but to all of Europe dating back several centuries.

When the bookshops were exhausted, my next task was to employ the help of one of those destitute geniuses who subsist off the back of the British Museum. The one I chose for hanging about the right part of the collections evidently understood something that I could not from Holmes’ strange note. This Toby Duffle was so exercised he almost forgot the money I tried to press into his hands.

None of the world’s riches would induce the somewhat recovered Holmes to leave Baker Street, however.

He quite nearly throttled me at the front door when I came back one day with the results of Toby’s research. “You have the step of a man with news to tell, I could see it when you turned the corner,” he said exultantly. “My theory must have borne out.”

It was so good to be greeted by optimism. I steered my friend up the stairs and into our rooms, much enthused myself.

I held the sheaf of papers aloft out of his reach. “It was Italy.”

“Oh?” Holmes was put off stride.

“But not only Italy.”

“My deduction was correct!” Holmes pounced upon the documents filling in some information about the treasure trove that had been discovered in Spanish chests about two months ago—some of which had ended up with _La Mano Negra._ The details of how these riches had been uncovered were hazy, but it was clear that they had been hidden for some time, and that several powers—most notably Italy and another power—had been circling around the items, each hoping to claim a share. Holmes’ eyes scanned the pages rapidly while he spoke.

“If Italy employed our friend Miss Adler to obtain the valuables, that does not concern us except to the extent that we should like our most worthy Adlerian adversary to fight another day. But the other contender has been very much engaged in this contest, only doing things their own way. A way that does not usually make the papers.”

I rang for tea and sat watching happily as that great mind creaked into its normal rhythm. Finally, the last paper was thrust aside, and he began to speak.

“Since the loss of the last of their territory in 1870, the Papal States are the power with the greatest need to claim these riches which appeared at a very opportune time for their interests, which are very important to many.” He nodded to himself. “All across Europe there are any number of Romish sympathizers anxious to bring their pope out of his current burrow in the center of the city. This is of much greater significance than the Italian group trying to shore up the status of that country’s monarchy by employing one of the premier thieves in Europe,” he raised his teacup in honor of Miss Adler. “There are many Italians for whom the papacy has far more allure for Italians who know the perpetual state of disarray of their politics. The same holds for Spain.”

“But you’re sure it’s the Italians and not the Vatican that asked Irene to obtain the treasure that is rightfully theirs?” I inquired, somewhat overwhelmed by all this history.

“Please, Watson, the idea that a pope would employ an adventuress is not only an infamous suggestion, but you must remember that drawing a straight line at this point in the game will likely lead you far from the mark. Now join me, if you will, in tracing this complicated web.”

I spread the papers on one end of the dining table while Holmes unrolled a map of the Continent at the other. We were back at work, side by side.

“Our ragtag historian fit the bill splendidly, Doctor, I could not have chosen a better one.” I beamed. “There are others like Mr. Toby Duffle, whom I have encountered in previous jewel thefts of a much more pedestrian nature. You and I have traced the pedigree of known diamonds and rubies and pearls that have gone missing.”

“It’s just as when a wife goes missing. You look for her previous attachments,” I supplied.

“And people are equally as unlikely to give up an attachment to a precious stone, however imagined it might be, as they are to a claim upon a lady’s affections.” Holmes approved. “But you and I, my friend, we chase after actual jewels. Mr. Duffle is one of many who ruins his eyesight searching after jewels that have been lost and never found. It’s not always something as notable as a theft.”

“Toby said that he’s identified dozens of jewels that simply stopped being mentioned at some point. Still, Holmes, I would have said it was a bit of a step to say that they’re not in someone’s strong-box right where they should be.”

“Others might be at the bottom of the ocean, yes, they may not be a matter of much interest for us. But then enter the Roman Church.” Holmes pushed a bishop from the chess set across the map.

“Your friend at the museum confirmed my first explanation for why the Spanish government would issue such a categorical denial when a simple, ‘It isn’t our treasure,’ would do.”

This was a point I couldn’t follow from the historian’s theory that the recently discovered jewels had something to do with the notorious Spanish Inquisition. I ventured; “It stands to reason that there would be plenty of spoils dating back to Spain’s time as the center of the Inquisition, ill-gotten gains from those burnt and otherwise tortured. They would have been mostly Spanish, I would think, and if nobles were among them, I can understand why many people would have wondered where these of the disappeared riches ended up—”

“Or where they came from, Watson,” Holmes broke in. “Given that some see the Spanish Inquisitor’s court as a hub for denunciations that went on throughout Europe. Those clerics were working ostensibly under the control of the church, but it was a splendid opportunity for those so inclined to use the threat of all the almighty to make off with all manner of booty that was never sent to Rome.”

He laughed at my shock. “Torquemada was an unbending judge, but perhaps he had his own vice in the form of greed.”

“But if these items have been languishing in a Spanish vault for centuries, which seems the most likely explanation, why should Alfonso XIII not stake a claim for them? They’re more his than anyone’s, I should think, and with things being so bad in his country, he could use the wealth.”

My friend was busy distributing salt across the map in little mounds. “Let’s assume that, however it happened, the Inquisition enriched Spanish soil with more than the blood of people unlucky enough to fall into its clutches.” He pushed the crystals to the Iberian peninsula. “Spain has never admitted these jewels and other treasures have rested in their coffers all this time, because any goods confiscated from people rounded up as heretics at the time would have a good chance of being returned to their original states, depending on how much a current government recognizes the authority of church law and some rather heated trials—if you pardon the expression.”

My friend’s jest about the burning of heretics during that time caught me off guard. Then I asked, “So you think determining this ownership would be highly messy and embarrassing for Spain, especially now given that things are none too stable there.”

That understatement about the tumultuous region elicited a snort. Then Holmes said quietly, “Any more than the pope wishes to admit to needing funds.”

“But you just said no one would want to lay claim to ill-gotten gains.”

He set down his papers and ran a hand through his hair. “Some of those jewels must have been stolen from the Vatican itself, what could have been centuries ago. It’s the only theory I can come up with for Rome’s involvement. There is information we do not have, Watson.”

Holmes threw up his hands at my look of consternation. “It’s the only possible reason for why my telegrams have been met with the strangest kind of effusive nothing. Everyone has something to complain about in Spain! But no. The almighty soul is at stake, Watson, hence my sources in Spain have had little to say. A world-class thief, a shaky monarchy, a nearly as shaky Italian state,” he moved chess three chess pieces to Iberia, followed by the bishop. “When such a rare confluence of events happens, the intervention of the divine may very well throw off even my calculations.”

“It seems the sort of business Ms. Adler should have let alone,” I observed. “Perhaps I can tell you everything else I learned over some supper.”

“Fine, fine,” he waved me off, studying his tableau. I counted myself very content with having gotten most of a roast fowl and a dish of peas into him, physically, while he concentrated on consuming every word I repeated from the historian.

After dinner the sleuth joined me for the dessert I had been saving for him: the sketches our researcher had kindly provided so as to give us some idea of what was rumored to have disappeared in the Inquisition.

“Some of these pieces are exquisite. And they’re only the ones Mr. Toby Duffle has tried to track. Imagine what sort of riches the church might possess, my dear Doctor, then we’re really looking at antiquities.” He focused again at the drawings from the historian. “If only a third exist, even if they are broken up, which would be very foolish—”

“They would cause quite a splash when they hit the market,” I ventured after a long silence.

“The European market, but widen your gaze, Watson. I daresay there are plenty of people at points west, south and east who do not feel any compunction about putting their immortal souls in the balance when they trade for a long-lost diadem of emerald and diamond that was once appropriated by Torquemada. A Buddhist, for instance, has at once a very forgiving and very rigorous concept of the soul—”

My friend could go on by the hour about the wisdom in his favorite sections of the Orient, but I was anxious to keep working on the matter at hand.

“Do you believe Irene Adler is still in Spain?” I asked.

“Irene knows full well that her dossier includes many entries of interest to the police in several countries, so I am not sure which of them she may have deemed safest for her at the moment.

With Ms. Adler, it is best not to stick one’s neck out too much with theories.” We exchanged a wry smile, recognizing that she had bested him twice.

“Perhaps she made away with something after all—you see here there are any number of pieces to this trove. Either way, she is in a predicament, Holmes. The lady must know how much she is worth to you and is planning to make an overture.” My friend’s earlier idea that the adventuress might seek him out no longer seemed so preposterous.

“I should be rather disappointed if that were to be all from the grand Irène, but we shall see.”

Eventually, Holmes did dare to leave Baker Street. He became frustrated with my torpid accounts brought back from the various foreigners he had me visit in the name of finding groups working to preserve the prestige of the Vatican.

To me, this link in our web of intrigue remained completely invisible, so Holmes schooled me on it when he was in.

“Many Catholics have did not take kindly to the annexation of the last of the Papal States in 1870, and they are deeply wounded by their pontiff being held ‘prisoner in the Vatican’ with his terrestrial holdings more measurable in yards than miles. I believe the Holy Father to be no less of a politician than a pope, Watson. Mark my words, his decision to retreat into his palace until some lands were returned from the newly unified Italy is playing upon the only capital he has left—that very outrage his flock feels by the loss of his prestige.”

That Holmes’ irreverence about politics would extend even to the Roman Catholic leader did not surprise me, but I had a very hard time following his logic after that. My friend pulled out dozens upon dozens of newspapers and found evidence in them of covert societies working to reinstate the papacy on ground more fitting of its dignity. It was the same when he indulged in his sometime habit of finding traces of Irene Adler in the most unlikely places all over the globe—the pastime was so engrossing as to almost indicate a malady, though he would often be proved right.

But these obsessions, if that’s what they were, had at least roused my dear companion from his lethargy, so I was willing to indulge him until a real case came our way.

Of course, these errands took me to the strangest places and people cloaked in the utmost secrecy, none of them what I would have thought a Catholic secret society would be.

One day we were both coming inside Baker Street at the same moment when Holmes stopped with his foot in the door. “Do you hear that?”

“I hear nothing.”

“Precisely. Mrs. Hudson is at home, as it is a Thursday afternoon and she always eats in before going to visit her friend, Mrs. Gale.”

“Perhaps she has gone early,” I said, trying to extricate my arm from Holmes’ strong grasp and head upstairs.

“She’s here, Doctor. I can smell the cooking. There was a good price on ducks at the market, and she would have run home with such a prize to prepare a fricassee with much clanging in the kitchen. But Mrs. Hudson is being abnormally silent about it, sir. That can only mean one thing.”

We went upstairs at last. I started a little at the sight, but Holmes evidently was prepared for the presence of a priest in our sitting room.

The visitor with strong Italian features and a fine head of curly black hair who was dressed in a severe black cassock was seated in one of the armchairs slanted towards the window. I imagined he might have done so to be able to see us coming in, but the man had a book in his lap that he was studying so intently that he did not seem aware of our presence. At one point he wiped away a tear.

“Good heavens, Holmes,” I whispered from where we’d stuck in the doorway. “He looks to have come straight from a funeral. This must be about some sort of tragedy that has already befallen someone.”

“Rather, I think our guest has been overcome by an excess of mirth caused by one of the works of Moliere, which corresponds to that empty space on the bookshelf where my lighter fare resides,” Holmes said in a louder voice, pointing to the spot on the shelf.

The priest rose, revealing himself to be of medium height and an athletic build, and the smile that took over his face quite changed his features once it reached his light eyes. “Moliere it is. The lady of the house was kind enough to allow me to wait and I wanted a bit of distraction.” He stretched out his hand. “I am Father Giuseppe Bruno. I trust I am not intruding at a bad time?” the man said with a thick but not impenetrably accented voice that was also not as severe as his first impression.

“You are very welcome, Father. It isn’t every day when we receive a member of the Dominican order in our parlor. I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is Dr. Watson, who has not recently heard of the Black Friars and imagined you to have come here straight from conveying a soul on their last journey. I suspect it is a bit more complicated than that.”

The detective’s eyes had been moving back and forth between the case at the man’s feet, a silk scarf lying on top of it and other details about his appearance that were invisible to me. Far from discomfited, the cleric seemed amused by Holmes’ habits. “Let’s all sit and discuss while we have a bit of refreshment. Watson, would you mind rousing Mrs. Hudson from her self-imposed pious silence?” He scrawled a note. “And please give her this.”

“What will he think of next?” Mrs. Hudson said, taking the note and rushing to the doorway to confer with one of the urchins who were always standing about. Then she returned to the kitchen.

I assured our landlady that our guest would not mind if she clattered and banged as much as she liked while she assembled some food. At the same time, I wondered how Holmes deduced Mrs. Hudson’s enormous reverence for the Roman clergy. She pulled out the good dishes, such as she would not usually endanger with the touch of Sherlock Holmes and his chemical experiments.

“Are you Catholic, Mrs. Hudson? I thought you were Church of England?” I asked, impressed by her care in preparation.

“I am, Doctor, but I’ve always had an admiration for holy people and places worth the bother, and your guest is one. It was the way I was brought up, considering a monastery cured a grandfather’s consumption after he was given up by all else. You tell Himself—” she looked upwards towards where the agnostic Holmes was entertaining the priest—“he better behave whilst on this case, if that’s what this is about. Unless the Father has come to save that lost soul, please Heaven!”

That was a rather amusing idea, but by the time I returned the two men were conversing in a mixture of English and French over a glass of sherry.

“Don’t stand there paralyzed in the doorway, Watson, join us with a glass. There is no overall vow of abstemiousness for Roman clergy. Father Bruno was just telling me that he has been entrusted by his Dominican order to search for some historical artifacts—or firstly, documents that prove they belong to the Vatican—that have fallen into the wrong hands.”

Since Holmes was taking no great pains to manufacture surprise at these topics we had been considering for weeks, I answered in the same tone, “Was he now? Holmes has been telling me all along that some of these recently discovered treasures had to do with your church, and your presence here tonight, Father, is yet another proof of my friend’s intellect. However, sir, I am surprised you would be consulting an English detective, and one who has little knowledge of any church, though there are many who have wished him to seek spiritual correction.”

I was rewarded by a grin from the master detective, who seemed to be in an excellent mood.

“My colleague is right, Father Bruno, you were determined to wait here until I returned. From what I have observed of your physical aspect, you can have only arrived on a steamship from Calais this morning after taking a train from Italy and then another train to London.”

“I must know: how you could see that?” the priest laughed.

Holmes never got tired of showing off, and he was happy to do so this evening.

“As for the steamship, there is a distinct smell of salt air mixed in with the incense that imbues your vestments—though not very strongly, since you have been traveling away from your usual holy quarters. And there are a few flakes from the crumbling paint often found on the older model of vessels used at Calais collected there in the cuff of your trousers.”

“So there is! Marvelous.”

“And the two railway journeys to get from Rome to London would be obvious to anyone, but I can always tell a man who has attempted to shave on a rocking carriage with only a small mirror. I hope the father will not be insulted to find out there are traces of shaving soap at several places along your jawline and ear.”

The priest clutched at his face, mortified. “There’s a mirror and washbasin there,” I pointed, and the carefully dressed cleric rushed to rectify the situation. 

“Yes Watson, you are right, our guest’s care with his personal aspect befits a Dominican, who have a reputation for being very exacting.”

The man returned form the mirror. “Yes, sir, much like yourself, Mr. Holmes, I think.” The priest turned a penetrating gaze upon the detective that reminded me that we were in the presence of a man who had more commerce with the beyond than we ever would. Holmes must have been thinking something similar as he allowed himself to be looked at for a change. “And this is why I have been sent to London to find something that has never been in London.”

The two immediately plunged into a discussion of church politics that jumped around all points between the fourth century to the present day. As an Anglican and not a very assiduous one at that, I was unable to keep up, and entertained myself by watching my friend’s eager brain at work and trying to understand what exactly the Vatican was after.

Conversing eagerly in the diplomatic tongue of French and the English that the Italian understood better than he spoke, they soon had all manner of books out in different languages. Then they turned to the papers in the priest’s hand-case, which were mainly in French and Latin. In the latter area I did prove helpful, because my Latin is very good—I took to it even more than my medical studies would have required—and through it I manage some French. Whereas Holmes’ near-fluency in French, gained from his French grandmother, was how he arrived at his basic understanding of Latin.

When we got to the Vatican communiqués in Latin, many of them intimidatingly old and signed by popes, Holmes sat back and smoked, taking over as the observer.

I had by this time forgotten my English squeamishness around a formally-clad priest of the Roman sect, and the young man and I—for he was very young, once I stopped looking at his dress—were translating the Latin aloud for Holmes’ benefit, the sleuth taking occasional notes.

It was a most amusing evening. Mrs. Hudson had, on Holmes’ written instruction, sent out for what turned out to be a red Italian liquor out of deference to our distinguished guest. With the crimson bottle arrived her most elegant fare—duck, floured potatoes and roast Brussels sprouts—but these offerings halted in the doorway.

The landlady found the priest laughing at my pronunciation of the Latin I had only spoken in terms of pathology, while he goaded me into copying his completely fluent cadences. There were stacks of papers and books all over the table, maps were cast on the floor with buttons and nails marking key spots, and Holmes was laughing more than I had seen him laugh in ages.

“What’s this?” Mrs. Hudson’s natural proprietary instinct kicked in when she saw the mess. Then she remembered the priest there. “I beg your pardon, Father, for this mess. Mr. Holmes, do clear that table so that your guest can have his fine meal before it gets cold.”

Holmes sprang up to get the heavy tray from our landlady, while the priest made a walkway through the rubble and I cleared the table.

“This is a most excellent offering, Mrs. Hudson,” Father Bruno said with that mixture of solemnity and kindness that made him seem fully a priest to me for the first time since I initially laid eyes on him. “Would you care to stay for the blessing? I think my new friends would not object, no matter what their beliefs?” He glanced from me to the detective.

Holmes and I made demurring gestures and Mrs. Hudson sat with us while the cleric offered a short prayer, also in Latin. I’m far from a Catholic, but the well-worn phrases giving thanks to a creator and commending our wellbeing, both physical and spiritual, to Him, were rather refreshing. Mrs. Hudson seemed to get caught up in the music of the syllables she couldn’t understand, but most surprisingly, Holmes seemed struck.

“Thank you, Father. Enjoy your meal and let me know if you need anything else.” The landlady took her leave.

While we ate, the purpose of the visit was put to one side.

“How did you know that I liked Campari?” Father Bruno indicated the liquor. “It is true Italians are known for their taste for it, but certainly not everyone partakes. I am sure you sent out for it based on something more than a stereotype, Mr. Holmes.”

“There are several spots of red on the sleeve of your white vestment you wear under the black.” The priest glanced at his sleeve, and Holmes continued in his neutral tone, “I did not discount the possibility that it was blood from some murder, since I could not examine it closely, but I though it a worthy guess that could hopefully be proven as fact before the after-dinner drinks came round.”

The detective burst out laughing at my look of horror that he had just called a priest a murderer, and the cleric in question had soon joined him.

“And did you obtain this proof, sir?” Father Bruno inquired.

Holmes’ face grew cautious. “There were several splashes on your documents as well. When you weren’t looking I licked one,” the priest’s eyebrow inched upwards, “And it tasted everything like the drink no Englishman would ever seek out, and nothing like blood. And for a person in your situation, carrying priceless papers, you would have thought first of saving them from your spilled drink, rather than your sleeve.”

Father Bruno clapped his hands. “I brought a bottle with me and sadly spilled it on the train, but at least my papers were mostly spared.”

Holmes then asked for news of the always-turbulent Italian political scene. We talked too of Spain, which is where the Vatican hoped its treasures had gotten mixed in with all the other resurfaced jewels and were being fought over by anarchists and any number of other groups. I ventured a few questions myself about the man Bruno himself, who was very likable though we still knew him so little.

“It is true that I am a Dominican, but there are far more layers to the Catholic church than most people will ever understand,” Bruno said. “The Vatican is indeed its own kind of government. I have the privilege to work with an elite group, not unlike your, how do you say, Ministry of Foreign Affairs?”

“Foreign Office,” I supplied.

“We are charged with dealing with the other political powers of Europe. Which is more important than ever since we lost Lazio.”

“Latium,” Holmes translated. Of course, we had been over and over the Italy’s annexation of the last of the Papal States. A dark look had come over the priest’s face, and soon we had finished the meal on lighter subjects.

“The Roman Question is on the lips of many in Europe,” Holmes returned to the question—obviously painful for our guest—of how the church’s historical holdings could be resolved in the light of a modern Europe.

The detective spoke mildly while we shared the after-dinner cigarettes he and I have after a meal. The priest had finally accepted a cigarette after great deliberation, and he was enjoying it as if he were inhaling the most precious vapor. Doubtless, Holmes though it was a good moment to get to the grain of the problem. “For now, His Holiness the pope is not too uncomfortable in his reduced fiefdom?”

The most extraordinary change came over our guest, and I have seen many fits and frenzies in this parlor. Outwardly, Father Bruno did not move a muscle. But his face, his tone, his very presence, became something quite distinct from the pleasant person we’d been entertaining this evening.

“We want what is ours,” the priest said. “The church stands on the earth and holds its head high to Heaven. History changes, but the church, with its roots deep in history, is eternal. These are paradoxes, such as those that must be confronted by faith. Which is why I was instructed to seek terrestrial means—“ the dark head nodded to us gravely—“To serve a spiritual end.” Our guest said his mission clearly first time.

“We believe that a very precious necklace was within the gems that have recently come to light in Spain. There are many precious stones in this necklace, which is all that would appeal to the average thief. But each link has a sort of coin depicting key events affirming in the church’s territorial power, earlier than Charlemagne. With the papal territory reduced to nothing, we should very much like to acquire this unbroken chain of events affirming the pope’s earthly reach.”

Holmes was nodding while the priest laid a detailed drawing before us. “This necklace is truly priceless, and when it surfaces among the collectors of Europe these documents will be decisive proof that the necklacewhat we call the Pope’s Medallions belongs in the Vatican. This is not only a question of justice, it would be of immense importance for the prestige of the Papal States.”

I was impressed by this show of nationalism—especially proud, as it would be in any dispossessed people—heightened by spiritual fervor. I suddenly felt that if Irene Adler had absconded with any Vatican jewels, she was up against a formidable enemy.

When I glanced at Holmes to see how he’d received the speech, I saw that my dear friend was impressed as well. He got up to fill our glasses—the priest’s with that red Campari drink, and ours with an after-dinner port—when normally Sherlock Holmes left the care of our clients to me. This time, however, the detective took great care pouring the drinks. He took so long that I could only think he was making an excuse to have his back to us at the liquor-tray, and I wondered if I’d missed some flaw in our guest’s story that Holmes was pondering. But by the time he was distributing the spirits, my friend’s expression was that of a thoroughly engaged Sherlock Holmes in good company.

Surely our guest had taken no note at all of those few seconds of privacy, having begun a quiet study of the sketches from Toby Duffle.

And yet, I detected in the detective a brooding quality, and I worried that this case was not living up to his great need for distraction. You see, the great sleuth’s deductive powers exceed mine in every realm except one: he himself. I’ve sometimes thought that Holmes’ intelligence is like the marine biologist who studies the morphology and breeding habits of any species in the ocean down to the smallest plankton. But he is wholly indifferent, if not ignorant, of the large icebergs and freighters that move right by his side.

In my companion’s case, these were the passions, the currents that move by Holmes as if they are strangers to the very life that they in some way represent. I then had the idea that if my friend were to find something to cling to, something spiritual to aspire to, in between cases, he might not sink so far into the depths.

We were each of us in our own brown study then, Holmes leafing through some of the documents in the priest’s case, and no doubt examining the case itself. I was trying to put a finger on the sense that the most interesting occurrence at that moment was occurring within that great mind.

The priest was the first to break the long silence. “My good sirs, you have given me an excellent evening with the very best of your considerable attention, but it is true I have not rested like this—” he laid his hand flat “in some time.” He had abandoned the straight-backed table chairs soon after dinner, and now I understood why he preferred the upholstered seats. “Shall I give you time to make your inquiries? You can reach me at the cathedral school, where I am to be given a bed that will at least be flat.”

“Father Bruno, I have not yet said I would take your case,” came Holmes’ most silken voice.  The man looked up confused, and Holmes seemed to enjoy this jolt. “As Dr. Watson so astutely pointed out, I am hardly the first choice for the task of untangling the church’s holdings in Europe. That is a task for a historian and perhaps a lawyer, and while my companion and I can stand for many things in a pinch, the correct distribution of these precious objects to their rightful owner has an intense symbolic import to your employers.”

Holmes paused to check that his listener was, in fact, hanging on his every word. “What I have deduced from our most enjoyable evening is that the Vatican knows very well it possesses the best documentation for this necklace, as well as a few others of considerable value. What you do not know is who has the medallion chain: any one of a multitude of Spanish players, Italy, professional thieves or someone else—or if the necklace simply wasn’t with the others in the Spanish vault. What you wish me to do is bring my deductive powers and sit down at this card game, so to speak, to discern who is bluffing, and who is not. Who has your jeweled medallions, in other words.”

“That is precisely it, Mr. Holmes. There are things even the Vatican cannot do, but you could.” The priest was left hanging in a long, eager silence.

“I will take your case, Father Bruno, but you should know my conditions. I work to return whatever artifacts we can locate to their rightful owner. If it happens that someone from Spain or Egypt or China appears with the most convincing line of provenance, your pope’s medallions will go to them.”

I was afraid he would be offended, but the priest’s splendid smile was back in place. “Of course, Mr. Holmes. If you were not honorable, I would not be here. From one man working in the service of what he knows to be good, to you and you,” he bowed to each of us, “I bid you good night.”

While the Italian packed up his papers into his hand-case, Holmes asked casually, “I meant to inquire, Father, if you met up with a friend of mine while in Spain. A certain Arlene Adler—an unforgettable woman. American, about so tall, reddish hair?” he indicated with his hand.

The priest stopped for a moment and considered. “I didn’t come across many American ladies while I was in Spain, but I’m sure I didn’t—” he laughed. “The woman who is wanted on suspicion of tampering with or stealing perhaps these very jewels I seek? I’ve seen her picture in the paper, and if I had been introduced to her we would have had a most interesting interview.”

The priest took his hand-case and departed.

Holmes and I were both lost in our thoughts after the dishes were stacked and left for Mrs. Hudson to claim in the morning. “Perhaps I have had some prejudices about those in the Roman clergy, but he wasn’t at all what I expected,” I remarked. “I can’t say when I’ve had a more pleasant time with the client on a case.”

“Quite so. It’s at the point of humor that cultures usually diverge, but I found his wit to be very compatible with the English variety—deprecating any sort of ceremony,” Holmes concurred.

“Exactly,” I said. “You know, for long stretches of time, I forgot he was a priest! No doubt I’ve not shared a meal and a drink with a Catholic clergyman, so I’ve not seen them off-duty, as it were.”

Holmes had a look on his face I knew to be significant, and it made me ask. “What? Are you saying he’s not a priest?”

“Are you?” he returned.

“Of course not,” I rushed to say. “I simply mean that I’ve not met a priest-and-then-some, a clergyman with an impressive post like his—a diplomat, in some sense. It’s an unusual combination, at least for my limited experience.”

“And for me, doctor, the Latin is a dead giveaway. Not the Latin he was decoding with you, which could have been the fluency of a scholar as well as a clergyman who has spoken it in school and in the halls of the Vatican.”

“The prayer,” I grasped. “Yes, it affected me, and I’m almost as much a skeptic as you. Mrs. Hudson was very moved. How you knew her feelings about Roman priests, I’ll never know.”

Holmes made a trifling notion with his hand about the reference to his talent. “Yes, just so. Only a member of the clergy has well-worn grooves in his sing-song prayer after much habit. Would you be able to reproduce what he said in English?”

I labored over as much as I remembered after a long day, and Holmes gave a desultory look through the papers the priest had left us. “If not his ordination, what is it that is bothering you?” I pursued.

“It’s not a bother,” his eyes flicked once over mine. “It’s a great pleasure in the perfect remedy to my lethargy. I have no idea how this case is going to end, Watson.” He looked down at his pipe while he lit it. “For all I know this necklace never existed anywhere except in the legends passed from friar to friar as a proof of their beloved church’s long patrimony. If that’s the case, we are left with some Spanish anarchists anarchists who rightly thought that posturing with a few gems would make them look more powerful than they are.”

He smoked for some moments considering the drawing of the medallions. “It could also be that one of these engravings depicts a lost and very convincing papal claim to what is now Italian territory. The Italian state would wish to suppress such evidence, and Irene could have been one of their agents employed to do so.”

He continued calmly, “If it is Italy who has a more convincing claim to the medallion, then I shall give it to them, but I will not turn over heaven and earth for some much less diverting Italian diplomat unless they employ me to do so.”

“Surely there is some justice to be done here,” I protest. “There always is.”

“Oh I’ve never been more sure of it than with this case, my dear friend,” said the mouth around the pipe in a tone of great warmth. “But my sense is that here, it may be hard to recognize as such. And neither you nor I, Doctor, should venture in these deep waters except in the service of some well-oriented party as a rudder.”

The lanky frame unfolded from the chair at last. “As of this morning, I was in part a convalescent, so I will put myself to bed before you propel me there by force of lecture.”

“Good man.” I watched him wander over to the bookshelf. Compared to this most recent crisis of some weeks, I myself could go to bed, happy that my friend would be guaranteed distraction diversion for some time with this case.

Holmes took several books off the shelf and turned with the stack in his arms to catch my doubtful look. “In case our stimulating evening doesn’t let me go so soon.”

“Take one of the sachets I’ve left on your table if it gets too late,” I admonished.

When I got to my feet after a few minutes, I happened to wonder what Holmes’ first move would be, out of the wealth of information that must be verified. To that end, I stopped by the bookcase on my way out of the room. The books he chose were most peculiar—not European history or law, though both will figure in this matter. One was from the collection of anatomy books. Another was something to do with ancient myths—I couldn’t recall if the book that belonged there was to do with Egypt or Babylonia or Greece.

The rest brought me up short. The detective had retrieved an entire series of books that I myself had placed in Holmes’ completely idiosyncratic filing system. Unlike most of my contributions it was never re-filed, no doubt because he refused to take account of it.

It was a collection of essays from the German and French medical experts embarking on the study of the mind in a scientific fashion. They were badly translated into English, but of all the new developments in medicine, the study of man’s inner workings fascinated me the most. These preliminary theories with their case studies were all by rather brilliant doctors who were attempting to discover the logic behind our seemingly ungoverned passions.

I’d dipped into the volumes a few times when we had cases involving some kind of disorder of obscure inner workings. Once or twice they’d been helpful in reminding my ascetic friend of these human dimensions that he sometimes forgot to account for in the humans involved in his cases.

That Holmes would have chosen those books out of all others as a starting place for this highly intellectual matter had me totally flummoxed. I myself brought my note-book to bed with me and made as many notes from our day as I could before the pencil slipped from my hand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watson suddenly begins to fear for Holmes' safety. He goes off on his own investigation that leads him to several shadowy societies.

In the morning, I struggled to make sense of what I’d written right before dropping off.

“There is a changeableness in this priest that is remarkable for anyone, of the cloth or not,” I had scribbled in my little book. “He is very social, even gregarious, but when introspection strikes he folds up into himself so that he almost disappears. I saw it when he was reading as we arrived, and after dinner. And then when he discusses his mission within the church, he becomes something else entirely, imbued with a conviction that is altogether formidable.

“Perhaps it has something to do with his hazel eyes, which seem to change utterly depending upon some inner climate. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and a perfect distraction for Holmes, but I am sure that the genial priest was observing us as much as we him. It could be that the very best Vatican envoys are the ones who can make you forget who they are….”

A suspicious note upon which to end a nice evening, was my thought by the light of a new day. And not very loyal to Holmes, who was himself once again with a problem to solve. I spent some minutes trying to give form to my unusually dispersed ideas about our new case and what it would be like for my friend to be working in the service of such an intelligent person. 

I wasn’t aware of the time until the man himself was banging on my door and then bursting in, fully-dressed and with a cup of coffee that he pressed in my hand.

“No time to waste, Watson! Your first appointment is in an hour!”

It was to be the first of many assignments handed out by an energetic Holmes in those weeks. The idea, he told me while I dressed hurriedly, was for us to carry on parallel investigations so that one could check the other. “These historical roots are very tangled after all these centuries, and we must not rely upon the documents furnished by the Vatican nor upon our amateur’s perspective. You will seek out these historians I have chosen for their even-minded reputations, in order to verify the documents or facts I release to you on a given day.” 

His eyes darted towards the window and he moved in that direction as he continued, “Another set of facts will be run down by the father and myself, who are thrown in together because his superior grasp of Italian, Latin and church matters, and my knowledge of jewels and thieves cannot do one without the other.”

“In other words, I help to establish that this medallion and the other necklaces exist, and which power owns these treasures. At the same time, the two of you try to find where the jewels are, if they exist.”

“I knew you were the man for the job, Watson,” Holmes took my coffee from me. “The dog-cart is downstairs. We’ll confer this evening.” 

There was so much do to. Over several weeks I learned more about obscure legal questions and the rise and fall of powers than I had ever hoped to know. Since gems or pieces of jewelry of fantastic worth did sometimes appear in various auction houses, there was no shortage of things for me to research. Some of these meetings had to take place in the evenings because of my modest practice.

Holmes listened to my daily report with his usual absolute attention, asking questions when needed. In that sense, it was proceeding like a typical case, albeit with more involvement from me. I was so glad to be useful, to be part of the vastly complicated investigation stretching across the continent and back in time. We had telegrams coming from the oddest assortment of people, and this time we had a third to our party who was such a good match for our well-established collaboration. 

After about a week, these supper conversations tapered off, and with them Holmes’ appearances in the apartment, though he left me hastily scrawled notes after that. Mrs. Hudson said he flew in and out like a whirlwind sometimes when I was not in, but we both knew he kept other quarters in various parts of town for secret identities and all the things even he wouldn’t dare do under our landlady’s roof, so his nightly absences were no cause of concern.

I felt as though I saw Holmes all the time because he not-frequently sent the priest to join me on some errand or other. Father Bruno only improved upon acquaintance, and in this way I learned a little more about this enigmatic Foreign Office representative in a round collar. He never went anywhere without his hand-case full of precious documents, which he would only entrust to Holmes a few at a time, and that with the promise of keeping it locked up in our safe. 

The father (for I could never accept to call him Giuseppe, though he coaxed me to on every occasion, and Holmes now called him Bruno with the greatest ease) took me to a few of our sacred spots in London where the statuary and other pious art came alive with his vast knowledge of scriptural allegory and symbolism. Even more interesting were the facts he dropped about his life. 

It wouldn’t do to ask an ordained minister about his past, so I had been hesitant to ask our comrade anything more than general descriptions of where he lived and worked. The great detective had also been remarkably sparing in his discussions of the priest, though I had little doubt that my friend’s mind spared no one in its analysis.

Over a month went by, approximately six weeks since our meeting, and none of the Vatican’s treasures had appeared on the market, though several exquisite regained pieces were sold at auction in Paris and one in Brussels, each with a different proxy so that it was impossible to determine who had brought the item to market. We now had several Spanish contacts who translated the news for us, and La Mano Negra did seem to be benefitting from a large influx of money, judging by the weapons that were sometimes caught at the border by the authorities.

During this time, Sherlock Holmes quietly solved several minor cases, for which he left pages torn from his notes to satisfy my curiosity. The priest had his own secret responsibilities while in London, and I knew they relied upon him for something at the cathedral as well.

One day Father Bruno was in an unusually open mood. We had gone together on an early afternoon errand to one of the dusty historians on Holmes’ list, and then we took a walk. Some schoolchildren were on some outing and were congregating around a park nearby. The priest smiled at their antics for some time, though I detected a certain sadness in his expression. 

He divulged that he was the eldest of three boys born to a shopkeeper in a seaside district not far from Rome called Ostia. “This is in the region where the Papal States existed for centuries, so mine was not the only family that felt as though the Holy Father was the patriarch of an extended family we and our neighbors had always been a part of.” 

“And this is why you entered the priesthood?”

He nodded. “Yes. From my early childhood I felt there was so much going on in church, and couldn’t fathom how people could find it dull. My parents were pleased.” A shadow fell over his face.

“And they changed their mind because the work you do makes you unable to confide in them?” I risked.

“Dr. Watson, you have your own particular gifts of insight, and it is not lost on Mr. Holmes. Yes, my parents would have preferred I became a parish priest. But right after I took my vows, both my brothers succumbed, one after the other, in one of the cholera epidemics that have passed through my country in the last quarter century.”

“And they died childless.”

“Right again, Doctor,” he agreed sadly. “All of a sudden I was the only son, and I was already pledged to a celibate life.” 

“How long ago was this?” The priest still shifted in appearance before my eyes, and I had not yet decided upon his age. Holmes refused to entertain my curiosity about the subject.

“I am but twenty-nine. I took my vows eight years ago, but I have been in the seminary since I was a teenager.” He sat down on a bench and motioned me to join him. “The church knows how to identify willing students, and it has furnished me with the very best instructors, cultivating a gift with languages that is useful for my current position. My superiors have entrusted me with some matters of great responsibility, and my parents took some comfort knowing how quickly I rose within my order, especially given that everything within the church leadership moves so slowly. But it’s not the sort of priestly life they imagined for me.” 

Taking advantage of his disclosure, I pursued, “Your parents took the lack of grandchildren very hard.”

“Your scientific friend would not like to hear me speak so, but I believe they died quite young out of grief, and the end of our family line was part of it.”

I passed him one of my cigarettes and he sniffed it avidly before allowing himself this vice he rationed so closely. I had viewed this minor struggle over tobacco as amusing, or endearing, but in it I suddenly saw all he had given up, though he had up until now made his circumscribed life seem easy. 

“And now your brother priests at the Vatican are your family,” I suggested.

He brightened somewhat. “Yes, there is a great comfort to be found in being with people of like mind, who have the same understanding of what is good that you do.” 

We watched the children for a minute or two. Finally, Father Bruno ground out his cigarette and stood up. “Which is why I am so thankful to have met such good souls here in England,” here he gave a small bow. “Please forgive me, I do not often talk about my family, and my heart has become unquiet. I should like to go to a church and pray. Is there one nearby?”

“Why yes, as it happens. St. James’ is just over there.” As I imparted the instructions I saw that Father Bruno was quite altered. I could hardly believe that this was the man with whom I’d shared a perfectly normal morning, because he suddenly seemed almost frantic.

“Thank you, my dear doctor. I can meet you somewhere later if you do not wish to wait.”

His face had now shut up like a clam, just as I’d observed on a few previous occasions, but never had he shunned company. The father’s behavior was so uncharacteristic this morning that I wished to have a cup of tea and make some notes about it. “Look for me in the tea shop around the corner, Father.”

I found a good spot near a window where a large panel protected me from any direct sun but still allowed me to see my friend should he reappear. 

There I sat, making a few notes that never resolved themselves into a clear portrait of this changeable man. “Father Bruno is so fascinating that I have quite neglected my ongoing study of Sherlock Holmes,” was what I had last written when I saw Holmes of all people walk by. He knew where we were to be that morning, so perhaps the detective had hoped to find us there with some urgent news. 

Before I could rise, as luck would have it, Father Bruno was coming towards the café, looking much calmer after his very long time at prayer. 

He hailed Holmes, and as they stood before each other not far from where I sat, I saw something absolutely extraordinary. 

Sherlock Holmes became someone else. Someone I’ve never met.

I would say that his features were more relaxed than ever, but it wasn’t true. There was a naked care on his face that sat strangely there. It was almost a fear that flitted around his visage while he had an apparently friendly conversation with the Roman cleric. In the space of a few moments, Holmes’ face became hollowed out as if at the end of a long bout of melancholia, though without losing its polite composure as far as any casual observer was concerned. 

As the talk progressed, Father Bruno seemed to be trying to communicate an important point. Then, right before my eyes, Holmes went from utter despair to ecstasy. I had never seen him reach latter end of the emotional spectrum except in the middle of an especially fascinating case, and the former, when there was no case to be had.

I tried to understand the pit of wrongness in my stomach, and realized that I felt positively bad for having sat at that table and not averted my eyes. I had witnessed a private moment, was the upshot of it.

But Holmes has no intimate moments, I wrote, trying to discern the reason for my upset. Certainly he is a private man, but he manages to share more with me than with anyone.

The two men were both of the same demeanor, now, smiling widely. The father even put his hand on Holmes’ shoulder. Had the priest taken on the role of spiritual advisor and Holmes at last had bared all his hidden torments? That would entirely explain this odd scene, and I could only hope that my friend had become more open to spiritual solace.

Suddenly, I sprang into action. Gathering up my note-book, hat and stick, I moved them along with my cup, saucer and cold teapot to a slightly larger table that was in a corner with little view of the street.

“Pardon me, miss, a fresh pot and two cups for my friends, “ I said to the waitress. As I’d hoped, the tea arrived just when my two friends came in the door. 

“Ah Watson, you anticipate us,” Holmes said, completely himself again after those additional minutes talking with the cleric.

I nodded to the narrow view of the street from this second table. “I could pick out your stride from a smaller pane. Hello, Father. All is well?”

“Very well, Doctor, there is nothing like admitting one is lost to begin to find guidance,” he said with that deep note his voice attained sometimes. “In fact, I feel very hopeful about the role I have been given to play. Our investigation may bring about something positive yet.”

Holmes gave one of his little all-purpose grunts and proceeded to wheedle the waitress into producing a snifter of brandy, though the establishment didn’t officially offer spirits. 

“To celebrate a most engaging case,” he pronounced with raised glass.

“Have you solved it?” I asked eagerly.

“No,” my friend said. “But I am resolved on what I must do.”

The priest asked anxiously, “You have found the Pope’s Medallions?”

“Not quite, but I can say no more about it until the denouement, and I rather hope to draw out the stages leading up to it as long as possible.”

Holmes cast aside his glass. “Until very soon,” he said, and dashed out.

Father Bruno was looking rather dazed. I took pity on him. “Sherlock Holmes dislikes having to explain himself until the facts reveal the picture he’s assembled. I’ve always thought it had to do with his mind working so quickly when fully engaged. There’s no shaking him off once he’s decided upon a course of action, so all we can do is wait and see what he does next.”

The priest seemed withdrawn into himself again and was barely listening as he drank his tea. “I am returning to my quarters for a while and will take in the evening Mass as is my custom,” he finally said. 

“Pardon me, Father Bruno, but is everything all right?” I had to ask. “At points today you seem as though you have been struggling with very bad news, which I take to have something to do with your family, since you have never mentioned them before today. I wish you to know I can keep a confidence if you need to make a clean breast of things.” He smiled and I realized I was inviting a priest to make a confession of sorts to me. And not any priest. “That is, if it is something you may share out of the many things you must keep to yourself.”

“Dear Watson. You have an uncommonly pure heart. You have kept our mutual friend in one piece, I suspect, and he is lucky to have you. I hope that however this turns out, I may call you a close friend as well.”

“Yes of course, Father. I already feel that I have known you half a lifetime,” I replied warmly.

“Such is what happens with like souls. You are a true friend to Mr. Holmes, and so I have come to know you very easily and with great pleasure.” 

He insisted upon paying the bill and we walked out together to each hail a cab to go in our opposite directions. 

As soon as his cab pulled away, the genuine warmth the man inspired in me left as well. My head became clear with the cool wind of reason. “Driver! Take me to Westminster Cathedral instead!” I cried, and the vehicle had soon taken a turn.

With that one decision, scarcely contemplated, my investigation began in earnest. 

It had nothing to do with the historians and fusty legal experts I had been so cleverly fobbed off on all this time. I was a man who had been left to wander in a neighborhood with a profusion of contradictory sign-posts, so that he would not walk outside those narrow confines and ask what city he was in.

I still didn’t know, but I was possessed of a great determination to find out. 

When the cab left me near the cathedral, there was no sign of the priest. I entered the church from the front door. I had half a mind to watch Father Bruno exercise his priestly functions, with the idea that seeing him in his consecrated purpose would at last resolve all the competing bits of the man into a whole.

“Pardon me,” I whispered to a sacristan who was replacing the spent candles before a large statue of the Virgin. “When is evening Mass?”

“We don’t have one except Saturdays,” the man said. “Schedule is at the door. If you can’t wait till tomorrow, you can try Sacred Heart. If you take a carriage you’ll arrive in time.” 

This unsettled me for some reason. Hadn’t Father Bruno told us that he’d been teaching some classes at the cathedral school? If he was so involved in the life of the church that was housing him, why should he attend Mass somewhere else? 

I was about to go out on the street and hail a cab in the direction of Sacred Heart when I saw Father Bruno hurrying out onto the sidewalk with a suitcase in addition to his usual hand-case. It was a small obfuscation, but my instincts told me I should not risk him seeing me at the church that was his likely destination, though why he should need a suitcase was beyond me.

As the driver loaded his belongings, I did have time to see that the priest had put on his heavy overcoat, which made sense with the wind that indicated a storm might be brewing. Underneath the coat he was not wearing his cassock or anything to betray his clerical state besides the round collar I assumed lay underneath the silk scarf knotted at his neck. He looked like a somberly dressed foreigner in a frock-coat—hardly remarkable at all in a Catholic church. 

Once the priest was gone, I hailed my own cab and returned to 221 B Baker Street. 

Holmes was out and stayed out, which was just as well because I felt very jealous of these half-formed suspicions about the priest that had spilled over this afternoon. I felt it would be wrong to share them, even with my intimate friend, until I was sure. Even in this feeling, I was not too far away from Holmes’ state of mind, I reflected, as he was also following his own line when he left the tea-shop.

To be investigating behind Holmes’ back felt very disloyal, but I am sure I only wished to protect him from one of several calamities I felt could be coming his way. 

“If only you weren’t such a stubborn man, Sherlock Holmes,” I said to myself as I gathered all our notes on the case to review them from the beginning.

I spent some time going through the translations of the priest’s papers, this time with a new eye. As Holmes had established immediately, every seal, watermark and stationery seemed to be genuine, and in many cases, ancient. Holmes had me go to some trouble to obtain samples of the crests and paper so we could compare them with what the priest presented as real documents from the Vatican and various European powers. 

My experts had been good for that much.

It wasn’t strictly prying, because in addition to the pages he tore out for my benefit, Holmes had never forbidden me to look at any of his notebooks, and the large one was lying open on the table. Such a prohibition would have been largely meaningless because his notes are in a personal shorthand, unless he went back over them to add a unifying logic. All I was looking for was the appearance of several words. 

“Passport genuine—Giuseppe Maria Bruno.” And then I thought I read “Unimpeachable.”

“Sister Angela,” was very clear, and then further down there was, “Catechism class every day,” with several times noted down reflecting a rather full schedule, then, “Has a gift with teaching, per the Sister: ‘As you would expect from a Dominican, though not nearly as severe as they usually are.’”

The last phrase was underlined several times, but I could make nothing of it other than a reference to the good nature anyone must see in the Italian priest. 

That was the most clearly written passage from the section that seemed to refer to the cleric, but from the rest I gathered that Holmes had taken his usual care in examining everything about his client. Stuck in the pages I found a telegram from Italy, and then a letter obtained—doubtless through Mycroft—from the British office in charge of foreign visitors. 

The letter said something to the effect that Father Giuseppe Maria Bruno had been sent as part of an exchange program so that an English priest normally stationed at Westminster could undertake some studies in the seat of that faith in Rome. At the same time a London school could have the benefit of a teacher who had grown up in that selfsame cradle of Catholicism.

I poured a glass of whiskey and realized I was somewhat disappointed that the priest’s hasty goodbyes during the time we spent together had not been to exercise his secret diplomatic functions for the Vatican, but rather so that he could teach Catechism to schoolboys. But that had been my own inference, not a deliberate falsehood on Father Bruno’s part. 

All I was left with was the priest attending Mass at a different parish than the one that housed him, if you didn’t count the mercurial moods that might simply be a Latin temperament.

So that Holmes’ keen eye didn’t see that I had been rifling through the case files, I stacked everything in one place, as if Mrs. Hudson had come in to tidy.

I sipped my drink, my eyes wheeling around the room for some next step. But of course there was no guide to Sherlock Holmes on our shelves, and if there had been, it would have no chapter on this new and surprising behavior I’d witnessed this afternoon.

I was deeply concerned about my friend, was what I finally allowed myself to think after the first whiskey and into my second. The man I saw talking to Bruno might have been a stranger. For a man whose psyche was already stretched to the limit with contradictions, any more could be dangerous. And no matter how much spiritual guidance a priest could offer, no one understood the patient better than I. 

Perhaps his life is under threat and he doesn’t wish to worry me about it, I considered. But plaguing me with constant errands to this and that historian seems like too much of a distraction simply to keep me from seeing he’s in harm’s way, when a nice country sojourn would have done the same. 

“Are you well, Doctor?” Mrs. Hudson asked. “I’ve been talking to you for a few minutes, and you’re the one I can usually count on to be civil.” She eyed the finger of whiskey still in my glass as if calculating how many had been poured from the bottle.

“Of course, my good lady, I’m so sorry. My mind is over-full and I was just thinking how much easier things are in the country.”

“You should take a holiday, Doctor, why not? You can give yourself a little fresh air without waiting for Himself to have one of his low times.”

I watched her bustle around, rendering things no cleaner but making her ownership of the space felt, as Holmes had often remarked behind her back—or otherwise. 

Then I said in a rush of feeling, “Mrs. Hudson. You are worth your weight in gold.”

She looked up, pleased. “I won’t ask how many of those you’ve had tonight because I know how to accept a compliment.”

She went out with a few dirty glasses and I slowly finished the one in my hand. A sojourn to the country was exactly what I needed.

“You’ll see I was not intoxicated in the least during last night’s conversation,” I said to the landlady when she brought in the breakfast. I was fully dressed with my bag by my side. “It turns out that I am going for a little trip.”

“Good for you, Doctor. I didn’t hear His Honor come in last night. Up to some tomfoolery, no doubt.”

“He didn’t,” I said with a smile. “Most likely he won’t notice I’m gone.” 

In fact, I was counting on Holmes’ distraction to utterly erase me from his mind. Just in case, I did take a train to Saunderton Station in Buckinghamshire, a decent spot as any for a bit of walking. There I rented a room, where I made a special point of asking the proprietor about card games in the area, so that he would assume my odd schedule had to do with low habits.

In the grips of a rare excitement, I changed into a rather formal suit I seldom wore and bought a new hat, a tall derby, in a shop near the station. 

With no walking stick in my hand, I was sure my gait would be slightly altered, and thus, with as much of a disguise as I thought prudent for an amateur in that arena, I took the train back to town and began searching for wherever Holmes had been keeping himself all these weeks. 

In the jeweler’s street they had, of course, seen the famous Holmes, who had a good status in this questionable district precisely because he kept his eyes on the case at hand and ignored any other wrongdoing he might happen upon. 

The fences and forgers whom I had met through various cases had also seen Holmes, a fact they were only too wiling to share with the right incentive measured in pounds sterling. 

All these excursions taught me was that Holmes had indeed been working the case, as we normally define it, and that he hadn’t troubled about disguises. Not that he normally would, in these streets. 

On a whim, I tried a madam who was known for allowing stolen goods to flow in and out of her establishment. “Oh, I’ve seen that one, I have,” Madam Yvette slurred, offering me a drink of the champagne she had evidently been consuming since the night before. “I’ve always said it, but no one would believe me, and then I got the proof. I won 50 pound off your friend, Doctor.”

This was very strange, because I was the one with the weakness for gambling, and even then 50 pounds was an enormous sum to stake. “You wagered with Sherlock Holmes? About what?”

“It wasn’t with him, but it was about him,” she laughed a bawdy laugh and gripped the table to keep from sliding off of her chair. “I was going out when he was going in over at Treacher’s. He was in company.” She hiccupped several times, long enough for me to place the name as an infamous den of assorted sins not far away.

“So he was at Treacher’s with someone with whom he is investigating a case. Holmes goes where he wishes in this city. I fail to see—”

“An’ then, then I rush out onto the street and sees Marty Pike, he’s the strong-arm man for Lady Ruby’s but he used to work for me. And I says, ‘Marty, come here and be my witness and I’ll give you a piece of the spoils.’ He about fell down, Marty did, seeing Mr. Holmes with his friend, a very handsome Italian or Spaniard or some such thing. And then all it took was for Marty to second what I saw in their manner of looking at one another, and watch them take the chit from Treacher. Then Lady Ruby and all them who’d bet against me over the years were forced to pay up.” 

Madam Yvette withdrew a large sum of money from her bodice. “I hope you knew your friend well enough to have laid money on what I could see as the truth a mile away.”

The woman drank straight from one of the open bottles as I left. Many of these women were addicted to all sorts of unwholesome substances, so I shouldn’t have expected this creature to make any sense. To leave no stone unturned, I went to the brothel run by Lady Ruby and waited for the woman herself to clear away the prostitutes simpering around me.

“This may be a rather odd question, er, Lady Ruby,” I said nervously with the girls hovering nearby. 

“I’ve heard it all, my sweet. What are you looking for?”

“Did you, by chance, have a bet with Madam Yvette. About a Mr. Holmes?”

“I did. And it was money well spent to learn that even he isn’t made of stone,” she said in wonder.

“What was the bet about?” I said in some exasperation.

“Yvette made a wager a few years ago that Sherlock Holmes wasn’t interested in the ladies because he was all about the lads. ‘Impossible,’ says I. ‘There are places for men to go, and I’m sure I’d have heard about it if he was a frequent visitor to the back rooms of certain cafes and taverns, such as Treacher maintains for those in the know.”

The conversation on the street with Father Bruno took on an entirely new significance. Father Bruno! Surely Holmes would never—with a man of the cloth! My mind was utterly astonished, so that I could not speak. Luckily, Lady Ruby went on without my encouragement.

“He could have come here on Wednesday nights, even. My establishment caters to all sorts. But nothing, not a sign all this time. As if he were a twig, that man. Nothing flowing through his veins all these years. I thought he might have a condition.”

My eyes narrowed. “Mr. Holmes is quite well.” 

“Then why are you looking for him in the likes of this place, Doctor? Not a touch of the sentiment yourself?” Lady Ruby countered shrewdly.

“Certainly not! Except, how might I find these specialized locales?” 

She watched me note down the addresses and passwords in my note-book, all the while licking her lips like a satisfied cat. 

The girls completely ignored me when I rushed out. 

These were mostly nocturnal venues and I’m afraid I frightened several proprietors to death with my precipitous appearance in broad daylight, making them think I was enacting an official or unofficial raid on their kind.

“I assure you, I come with no judgment,” I told each proprietor. “It’s just that I urgently need to see my friend. His name is—“

“Sorry, guv, we don’t do names here. If you describe his face I might know.”

Holmes’ aquiline profile was memorable, and with the addition of the Italian they would have been unmistakable. 

“Sorry, sir, we’ve not had the likes of either of them,” each of the proprietors said, and they seemed too nervous to lie about it.

Treacher’s wasn’t open until very late in the day, and when the door finally was unlocked it was by an unhealthy-looking man who blinked as if the waning light were too much for his nocturnal eyes.

“Mr. Treacher?” I inquired. 

“You can call me that,” he replied, ushering me into his back room. He listened quietly as I conveyed my urgent need to see Holmes, although at this point I wasn’t sure exactly why.

“Not every man needs to come here to drink and carry on,” he said. “Respectable gentlemen who need a place to go away from the wife, like, there’s a few hotels for that too. That’s what your friend was asking about. In order to get in you need someone to vouch for you, to give you a chit,” he fished a piece of colored cardboard out of his pocket. “Like this, with the signature of one of those in the know. Me knowing Mr. Holmes for some time through his profession, and taking a look at his friend, I could tell that they weren’t on no official business, so far be it for me to deny them safe harbor, so to speak.” He chuckled in a filthy way, but I had no time to rebuke him.

“Really? Could you tell me the likely spots?”

Surprisingly, the odious little man wouldn’t tell me for any price. 

At the grimy door, I turned. “If you are bound by such a code of honor, why would you talk to me at all?”

The man called Treacher burst out laughing. “Because he told me to. Mr. Holmes. He said if one looking such as you,” his eyes comprehended my appearance, “Should come after him, I should by all means tell him what I was able to tell. He said you were all right, that you weren’t no copper, not a real one. You see,” he reached in his shiny waistcoat and pulled out a few of those disks of stiff colored paper. He selected a yellow one.

“What I give is a chit, like. If someone comes in here looking like he’s up to no good, I gives ‘im a yellow chit, which means a copper. He may present it to the proprietor of any of my hotels, and they’ll be warned to treat him straight on the up and up.

“You get one of these others,” he spread out various pieces of cardboard, “It means I’ve looked you over face to face, and I say so when I’ve signed it with me own hand. That earns you a spot in a quiet hotel where no one will ask you no questions. They change the meaning of these colors all the time, my comrades, so’s I couldn’t tell you where he went, Doctor.”

“If you are so protective of this information, I’m surprised you wouldn’t give Holmes a yellow one. He’s on a case, after all,” was the scenario I still clung to.

“I had half a mind to give him the yellow chit, but I looked at his companion and thought different. That’s why we handle the matter strictly face-to-face. It’s how I know you won’t say anything you shouldn’t.”

Being leered at by the supposed Mr. Treacher was more than I could bear at that moment. Besides, he’d told me little of use. This sent me back to Madam Yvette, who was too inebriated to keep any professional secrets. 

She mentioned three modest inns known to participate in Treacher’s scheme. The approved men were told to arrive separately and then were allowed to meet in the same room if they were discreet about it—and willing to pay a hefty sum. 

I tried the first two and was utterly shut out by both concierges. No amount of bribery would make them divulge who was on the guest list or conveniently left off, so at least the men desperate for a hideaway were getting the privacy they paid for, I supposed. 

The only thing left was to watch and see who went in and out. I decided to start with the third one, where I hadn’t made a nuisance of myself yet, and I set myself up in at the bar. There were a few travelers in clean but simple dress, including one married couple and two elderly ladies, both obviously in from the country, and this pattern was borne out by the people I saw entering and leaving the hotel. 

Thankfully, the most absolute privacy reigned here as well, and no one so much as looked at me while I sat hoping to see Holmes and begin to understand what was happening to him. 

My hopes were not realized, but the visit was far from in vain.

From my seat, I could see trolleys being sent out from a hidden kitchen that adjoined the back of the bar. If I swiveled around, I could also see these trolleys and trays being carried by waiters who were waiting to go up on the one narrow lift.

Since this was far from a five-star hotel, it was only simple fare offered on the menu for both drinks and food. Which was why the crimson-colored glass caught my eye when the sleepy-looking page carried it by. Campari. I’d never seen it up close before the night Holmes ordered it for Father Bruno, and I’m not exactly provincial when it comes to spirits. It’s not an Englishman’s drink. 

Unless there was another Italian on their premises, I might be in the right place. 

Suddenly, I would not for all the world be seen spying on my friend’s affective life. I paid my bill and went out on the street. There was a fine mist falling, so I was forced to spend some time locating and then purchasing an umbrella. I then retreated gratefully underneath the anonymity it afforded. 

After about an hour, my patience was rewarded. Holmes left first, and some minutes later, Father Bruno came out the door to meet him at the corner. With his unfailing prescience, Holmes had, of course, brought an umbrella, and the Italian ran up to the detective, who, laughing pulled him under the shelter from the rain. 

They walked without hurry, only very slightly closer than necessary to stay under the umbrella. Holmes halted them before a newsagent’s that was still open and they picked up a whole armful of papers, the selection we’d been following for months, no doubt. 

By this time I was slowly walking on my side of the street, which was thankfully darker. They made their way to one of the taverns I’d queried this afternoon. It was either the first time that establishment had welcomed Holmes, or the owners were truly discreet. 

They stood in the doorway while Bruno fumbled with the umbrella. Holmes very naturally reached around the smaller man, surrounding him in his arms to help him collapse the thing. 

It was an embrace in all but the technical sense. They separated and looked at each other, with the sort of smile that shuts out everyone in the world but the people sharing it, and then they rapped on the door in code, uttered the password and disappeared into the privacy of their affair. 

Two slatterns, one of either sex, mistook my loitering across from the café for some deeper inclination, and I must confess my inner tumult was so great I was unable to rebuke either of them as sharply as they deserved. I took the late train to Saunderton Station, all the while enduring the discomfort of clammy trouser-legs and wishing fervently for a hot bath. 

The water at the inn was not as hot as I’d hoped, but I managed to get warm in the big four-poster heaped with eiderdowns, which took up most of the space in the room.

Perhaps if the situation were different, I would be trying to adjust to the news that my old friend had this completely unexpected predilection. As a doctor and a military man, I don’t consider myself sheltered. But as it was, any shock I felt radiated from Holmes’ complete lack of an emotional life, which I had thought essential to his nature. It was as though a bear started reciting Shakespearean sonnets or a fish began walking on land. Holmes and matters of the heart—or the body!—were utterly foreign to one another. 

But that night I lay under the covers with only the bedside lamp and my note-book for company while I tried to make sense of the more vexing questions before me.

How could Holmes accompany a member of the cloth in a detour from his holy vows? My mind rebelled against it. Sometimes my friend has looked the other way with certain crimes, but his personal morality is absolute. Again and again, I tried to understand how he could be so different than I had thought.

The other question, easier because it offered me someone to blame, was—who is this Father Giuseppe Bruno, anyway? Not a very good priest, but is he a priest? Holmes said he’s the genuine article—that’s what his notes said, a textual citation from the section where he was examining Bruno’s credentials—and normally that’s sufficient for me.

But what if Holmes’ emotions—emotions!—had gotten in the way of this case from the beginning? Everything would have to be re-examined—without my friend’s knowledge. Who even knew if this convoluted case was about jewels and Vatican claims or Spanish anarchists or anything at all other than an excuse to spend as much time with the crooked Italian as possible? 

Finally, I fell into an exhausted sleep. Something about the last 24 hours had shaken everything I held dear, and those are the cases when I do normally seek out country air. Conveniently, I was already there. I walked out into the hillside and endeavored to think of nothing for the next two days. I did find a card game and I played strangely well.

I daresay it was the most peculiar thing in a long line of recent peculiarities. Normally, half the fun in cards is the company—the other delight from gambling is a double-edged one, as any risk-taker knows. But this time, I sat there in the tavern and I joked with the men who had no idea of my true concerns, while another part of my mind was as clear and silent as it had ever been. Following and anticipating the action was effortless, and twice I surprised everyone with a winning hand. 

On the train back to London I decided what it was: my heart was so full with private concerns that no one could reach me there if I tried. Abandoned on that island, I was able to see everyone else very clearly. “Is this what Holmes feels like?” I thought. With the disguise and investigations of the last few days, I had thought I understood my dear companion better than ever.

But it was while staring out a railway carriage at a scenery that could not touch the knot that was mine, and mine alone, to unravel, I think I was truly close to Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps I could only see his diamond-clear insight now that I fear it may be utterly warped by the advent of love, if that is the right word for what was happening to him.

It took the entire train ride back to pack away my questions and talk myself into something like my normal good humor. 

“Watson, my good fellow, I can always tell when you’ve come from the country because you have the air of the just about you,” Holmes crowed from his late breakfast. “You didn’t eat, so correct that now and then we must be off, each to our own errands.” 

I didn’t bother asking how he knew I was suddenly ravenous, and had my own breakfast while Holmes leafed through his large notebook. 

“If it’s another legal expert you wish me to consult, I’ll need to ring for more coffee,” I said drily. “Questions of international law require a clear head, in my experience.”

“Oh no, Watson, not at all. I was going to send you here.” He slid across a sheet of paper written in his own hand.

The address meant nothing to me except that it was a rather uninteresting address. “What could our case possibly touch on there? And hadn’t I better bring the father?”

The habitual title stuck in my throat.

“I believe Bruno to be quite occupied at the moment.” 

“What are you going to do?”

Holmes was rummaging through cupboards and didn’t acknowledge my question. Soon, he was doing the same within his bedroom.

When I looked at the opposite side of the paper, I was dismayed to find that it had “password, utrimque.” It could only mean another underworld destination, which indicated that Holmes was aware I had been asking after him. 

He must be sending me to another one of those establishments catering to like-minded men. Since he was in such fine spirits over breakfast, he must not be ashamed or upset at the shared knowledge, but I did not like this errand. 

When I arrived at the address, however, the place turned out to be a street-level entrance in a large house with a placard advertising dressmaking services. When I knocked, a perfectly normal looking woman came to the door, I uttered “utrimque” and her face became much more pleasant. She led me inside a parlor strewn with fabric and dresses that opened into a deeper recess inside. 

We came up to a man, a hearty-looking middle-aged person, with an air I couldn’t quite place but didn’t seem to be a liking for his own sex, looked me over very closely before letting me in the next door.

“So, you’re Mister Holmes’ friend,” he said in a reassuring English voice.

“Yes. I’m afraid I don’t know why I’m here, but perhaps I should clarify.”

A group of men had gathered in the doorway leading still deeper into the house. So great was my discomfort that I did not immediately notice the clerical collars some of them were wearing. 

“Are you? Is this?” My horrified idea of a place where the Roman clergy could escape from their vows for a few hours could not be formed into words. I should have recognized that the password was Latin, though I could make no sense of its meaning—“both sides.”

The men in the doorway parted to make way for another woman carrying a tray and tea service. She set things down on the small table and one of the men in clerical collar took her hand. “This is Rebecca. My wife.” He followed my glance to his bare ring finger. “In the eyes of God, but not the eyes of men, who are not ready for the church to go back to the ways in the time of St. Peter, the rock of our church, who had his own support in his wife.” 

The other men murmured assent and gave me their names while I sat on one of the mismatched chairs and the others did the same. “Not all of us are married, but we all believe strongly in certain reforms,” said the first man I had met, who introduced himself as Father Enoch. “We’re all in ministry, and between tending our church flock and our families we have little time together. On certain mornings as many of us as can try to take the train in and meet for prayer and encouragement. It is a difficult life.” 

By now I had found my tongue. “But how can you defy your vows? And what about your wives and children—it can’t be fair to them!” I was thinking of Holmes, condemned to an additional level of subterfuge because of his intimacy with Bruno.

“Being a priest is not something you leave idly by,” one of the priests explained. “Nor is love. And we hope that this trying situation won’t have to go on much longer.”

“We’re not the only ones,” another woman named Sarah spoke up. “There’s people everywhere that are working to change things. Now is the right time.” 

“People like Father Bruno?” I asked, trying to put together what little I knew about his Vatican functions with the Catholics seeking to restore some land to the papacy. 

A look of sorrow passed around the room, and I realized they were aware of the nature of his affections. “Dear Bruno was meant to be a priest—no one could deny it,” one of his brother priests remarked. “What has befallen him is a tragedy.”

This was not at all what I expected to hear about the enigmatic Italian who had seemed quite well last night. “Has something happened to him?”

“Yes, he has been laicized, what you would call defrocked,” Father Enoch said mournfully. “The punishment came so swiftly and far out of proportion for his behavior, so that we are sure someone in the Vatican found out his true allegiance with our sect.”

They must have been more intelligent than I, for the allegiances held by my friend the priest had never been so far from my comprehension.

One of the younger priests took pity on me. “Father Bruno’s career ascended so quickly that he was the favorite chosen to protect the pope’s interests in Spain and reclaim the jewels in order to use the wealth to further Vatican interests. But for a few years now, he sympathized with our vision of what those were.”

“But no one knew,” another man known as Father Tom said. “We’re quite sure that no one understood he had sworn himself to our group.”

“Then what could have happened?” I asked, with a strong suspicion.

“While he was in Spain, he was discovered to have an affair. A doubly forbidden affair. We do not believe that what happened was anything like the news that reached his superiors, but Bruno admitted he had made one error,” Father Enoch shook his head sadly.

“The purpose of our group, in case you didn’t guess, is to allow marriage for men who are ordained. We do not support licentiousness of any kind,” Father Tom asserted. “But Bruno is different.”

“You can’t know the workings of the Vatican, sir,” the father continued. “But everything is very slow. It was extremely unusual for the authorities to act so swiftly. Bruno was suspended and then, yesterday, received a ferendae sententiae.” 

My face must have betrayed my confusion. “If one is suspended, he cannot perform the sacraments. But the other means he is no longer a priest.”

Everyone else in the room was very sorrowful about that turn of events, but my heart was filled with relief. “No longer—you mean he’s not subject to his vows?”

“No, he is not. But this great young talent is no longer uniquely placed to direct the church and its wealth towards a more liberal future. The pope won’t stay a prisoner in the Vatican forever, you know, any more than the Jews will be content without a Jewish state in Palestine. We desperately want the church to be reborn in a more human way.”

Surrounded by all those earnest faces I suddenly felt claustrophobic—not because of the narrow room, but because all of them were so full of conviction, the kind I glimpsed in Bruno at times, and it was too strange and too large for me to find a place in it. 

Another woman showed up with some seed cakes, and before anyone took a bite, every body in the room froze. Then one of the men began to pray. It was the same prayer I heard from Father Bruno every time he ate. As Holmes pointed out, the priest intoned it with the same rolling cadence that any practiced giver of blessings would have. 

The cake was good, and the conversation regarding what I took as good news about the ex-Father Bruno awakened my appetite. To the group I remarked, “I can’t claim to understand your cause, but as an Anglican I see nothing wrong in married clergy, and you’ve been most kind to set my fears at rest.”

“Fears for your friend, Mr. Holmes?” There was laughter. “Our fellowship has seen the peace attained by priests who had thought affection forever denied them, only to find their true mate. Bruno brought Holmes to meet us, and he stayed for less time than you’ve spent with us, and any of us could see that what the spirit has joined is no one’s place to question.”

As I left I heard the distinctive sound of Latin chant behind me, and wondered if those were sanctioned prayers or not they were offering. It wasn’t really my concern, but all the way back I wondered if these pleasant revolutionaries were right to think an ordained man could demand “both sides”—a home life and a life in the church. 

When I came back to our rooms, I felt a thousand times lighter than when I left. Holmes had left me a note with another address and a password and the words “6 o’clock. Dress for dinner”. 

Good heavens! What other clandestine revelations could there possibly be? 

My mind couldn’t conjure up any reason for a password after “homosexual tryst” and “headquarters of a secret society” had been used up. It wasn’t the nicest part of town, either, far from it, which made me feel rather conspicuous in my evening attire.

There was a tough-looking youth loitering about the front of the building. When I intoned the password, he stepped aside and pointed up. “Top floor. Knock thrice while you’re about it!”

As I mounted the stairs, I realized I did recognize the address—as one of the several rendezvous points Holmes maintained across the city for his assumed identities. Any false existence associated with this unpromising attic couldn’t be very reputable.

Even before I knocked at the door, Holmes opened and stood in the doorway. Undisguised.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes reveals all about the case and himself. Watson struggles with these new facets in his old friend, but at the same time enjoys their new working situation.

“I knew you’d be brave enough to venture into this foul neighborhood, my dearest Watson,” he grasped my arms warmly. “Come in, you are most welcome.”

My host, also in evening dress, made way for me to enter into the large attic room with vaulted ceilings, many of them with panes of grubby glass. Some of the walls were in the midst of being painted a more wholesome white, and the rest of the space bespoke of a busy optimism.

There were some easels and paints set up with canvases upon them, and the walls displayed exotic tapestries and a few paintings even my poor eye could discern as very fine. 

That luxury contrasted with the large bathtub that dominated the back part of the room, with a small passage further down, and, of course, the squalid building that was mostly given to small shops.

An alcohol stove in the corner had a kettle on it, and there were various trunks of books and clothes in the process of being unpacked into some dressers and a bookcase. Cushions were strewn about in every corner, except for one where Bruno’s familiar hand-case had come to rest with a small crucifix and a statue of the Virgin set atop the worn leather surface.

The most settled part of the attic was the bed—curtains modestly hid its interior, but there were several reading lamps on crates and one fine glass globe hung from a chain on the ceiling. It was to this last that I tried to attribute the warm glow of the humble abode, but a good part of it also seemed to be coming from my friends, who were watching me anxiously.

“In here one leaves the city behind,” I said. “This could be an artist’s den anywhere in the world. I take it that is the identity you use here, Holmes? Though I suspect you must have had a hand in the housekeeping, Bruno, for Sherlock Holmes’ dens are never this clean.”

“The paintings and wall hangings were my contribution, Watson, or rather, that of Lyndley Darwood, dissolute artist,” he put on a robe and long wig lying to one side and became a Bohemian of unwholesome complexion before my eyes. 

“You find it pleasant? I am glad,” Bruno said happily. “One cannot choose what happens in one’s life, but it is important to have some dignity while you’re living it.”

“I hardly call a bathtub in the middle of the parlor a sign of luxury, but it was a detail that did not bother me overmuch when I was merely spending an occasional night on my bundle on the floor.” Holmes had come up to the—ex-priest, it was odd to think of him that way. “But then Bruno does everything so gracefully, even falls from grace.”

Bruno took on a pained expression, and Holmes embraced him. 

This improved both their outlooks immensely, even more so when they saw my eyes looking for somewhere safe to land. 

“It’s all right, Watson, this is very new to me as well.”

“Please sit,” Bruno urged, pulling himself and Holmes down on some cushions. “We have not had very much time to acquire things such as chairs.” They had gotten so far as to find an evening jacket for Bruno, and it was hard to tell if it did not fit him properly or if I couldn’t reconcile myself to him in a layperson’s outfit.

At any rate, the oddness of perching on the floor while wearing dinner dress did not distract me for long. I returned to Holmes’ earlier comment on his new situation. 

“Which is why, as a scientist, you borrowed my set of treatises on—the mind, and other intimate matters.”

“Just so,” he beamed. “If you have questions, there is a rather good essay in there on the subject.”

I blushed, and Bruno handed me a glass of wine. “Do not worry, we are having dinner sent in,” he said, gesturing to the row of cabinets around the bathtub that must constitute the kitchen. “I went straight from my mother’s kitchen to the seminary and never learned much about cooking.”

“I’ve made him my excellent Welsh rarebit a few times on Baker Street, but we wished to have a real dinner for you tonight,” my friend said. We heard steps coming up the stairs and then someone who knocked three times.

Holmes let in two waiters wearing the livery of Pagani’s celebrated restaurant. They unpacked a whole series of covered dishes along with more wine. “Come by tomorrow and pick everything up. Not too early,” Holmes said with a novel grin as he left a handsome gratuity.

“How did you manage to get Pagani’s to deliver here?” I demanded. 

“On one occasion I neglected to mention to the police that the owner had allowed some fugitives to spend a day in their cellars. Come, come, Watson, my morality has never been all that rigid.” 

They turned over crates and upon them we had the excellent dinner. First Bruno intoned his prayer, and then over the meal he spoke a little about his plans for improving the attic. I could scarcely listen, because it was as though I had been thrust through the looking-glass and I could not get my footing.

“Watson, swallowing all those questions is sure to affect your digestion,” my friend observed.

“Let me state what I believe to be true, and we can start from there.” The other two men nodded. “You really were a priest, obviously.”

“How could you ever doubt?” Bruno asked with a note of reproach.

“I don’t know, there was something—else.”

“Precisely, Watson. You perceived right away what took me days to untangle. Bruno was a priest—and something else. I took his story of belonging to an elite corps at the Vatican to be true, because who knows what really goes on there. But the prayer was something that bore looking into.”

“It’s not a standard prayer,” Bruno admitted. “Our sect has our own habits.” 

“But it is a prayer, with the unmistakable sound of something with a life of its own, many times recited. That made me very curious,” Holmes said.

“At that first dinner you had the look of a man who had seen a ghost, Holmes,” I ventured, and then explained for his companion’s benefit, “I had never before seen Holmes find reason to turn away to master his expression, which he did while carefully fixing the drinks. Something about meeting you unnerved him like never before, and I struggled to put aside your friendly manner and understand who you really were.”

Bruno looked touched. “You felt our first meeting so strongly?” He touched Holmes’ hand.

“My head was a very eventful place to be that evening,” the detective acknowledged. “By morning I had decided to lead Watson on his own parallel investigation so that I could spend time with you. In private observation.”

“It wasn’t very nice of you to send me on fool’s errands all over town,” I reproached him. “I’d rather you’d sent me to the country.”

The two men stared at each other. “They weren’t fool’s errands,” Bruno said. 

“If the jewels were to turn up, then our friend would have a far better dossier to back his claim that they really belong to the church. And they are out there, which is why Bruno and I spent some time trying to locate them in the various thieves’ networks.” Holmes’ eyebrow arched in my direction. “What did you imagine us to be doing, Watson?”

He released his booming laugh at my discomfit. “I assure you, until last night Bruno treated me as a perfect gentleman, and since you are so interested in my virtue, that it remained intact until he was well and truly defrocked.”

Bruno got up and replaced my wine glass with a whiskey and a look of sympathy. “If you think you are confused, imagine what my life was like, moving from mask to mask, never feeling entirely at home.”

“Are you the only one of your group who is—of your inclination?” I inquired. “The fellowship I met today seemed to be family people. “

The Italian underwent one of his rapid shutterings. Holmes moved his chair over and clasped his arm tightly around the man. “Bruno risked everything to try and reconcile his desire to stay a priest with the strong urge to continue his parents’ line as they so fervently wished. He found others who believed the same, he went searching for a wife—”

“And found myself utterly unsuited to the task,” Bruno finished ruefully. “For someone who always planned on being a priest and has lived in the seminary since boyhood, I never had reason to think of what my direction my desires lay in. My group preaches fidelity, and I have only indulged once—I felt I had a right to be sure this is indeed what I am.”

“And the strumpet he met in Spain betrayed him,” Holmes said with a possessive clutch of his lover’s side.

“It was a very unlucky scandal,” the Italian said with a grimace. “The church suspended me very quickly because such a public sin cannot be tolerated in the inner circles where I once worked.” 

“That was the second line of investigation for me,” Holmes broke in. “The man is a priest, fine. He’s a member of a rebel sect, fine—that’s the ‘and then some,’ you sensed. He really does teach Catechism—a visit to the Cathedral school under a fatherly disguise allowed me to determine that. But—”

“Sherlock says he went many times to see me celebrate Mass at Westminster, although I never saw him,” Bruno told me.

“Because he made every excuse not to attend, or at least celebrate, services there. When I did see him it was early morning and the service was so simple, just one priest and a few old ladies, that he sat in his dog collar and black weeds among the congregation, as was quite natural with the small audience.”

“And otherwise he went to evening services, which the cathedral doesn’t offer during the week,” I completed. “I watched you run out of there the other day after we’d met in the tea-shop, Bruno, and it struck me as very wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.”

“That day,” Bruno moaned, seemingly uneasy that he’d been followed. The detective ran his fingers through the dark curly hair. 

“Yes, Watson, I know. When I saw this pattern, I knew something must be very wrong, because here was an untrustworthy person in the most trustworthy guise. For a few hours I was inclined to push my feelings back in the box where they had lain dormant for so long with little consequence.” 

“I’m very glad you did not,” Bruno whispered to the gray English eyes next to him. Holmes got that rabbit under a gun sight look I’d seen that first night, and I’m afraid I gave a little jump, as I had for all the displays of affection I’d seen that night.

“Then I did some research,” the sleuth continued imperturbably, “And found that something was very wrong in the eyes of the church. He was forbidden to celebrate sacraments and went through the most extraordinary measures to manage the expectation that he would take Communion—”

“It was very painful, this time,” the ex-priest said. “It almost came as a relief to be released from the waiting for them to shut me out forever.” 

“Which is what you two were talking about on the street!” They both knit their brows at the connection I’d just made. Then I had to explain sheepishly, “I saw the entire exchange in front of the tea-shop, and couldn’t imagine why Holmes went from the deepest agony to some strange excitement. I thought you were on the verge of some kind of fit, old man.”

Bruno laughed weakly. “I tell him with a very serious face that I have had a letter from the Vatican, and that it is the very worst news. I do not realize the he thinks I am being called away forever.” 

“When I found out that the self-same Vatican was actually writing to smile upon our adventure, in a way, my outlook did take a rapid turn.” Holmes scanned my face. “You must have changed tables before we came in, because there was little sight of the street where we all sat.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t have ever dreamed of spying on your intimate moment—”

“But you didn’t think I had them,” Holmes completed in his matter-of-fact manner. “Dr. Watson, you could have joined a plot to overthrow the British empire and I might not have noticed these several weeks. Conducting an investigation while trying not to be the fool who throws himself at an uninterested man, and a priest at that, has taxed my considerable faculties.”

They put some music on the phonograph that was their only luxury, and the two men took turns describing the hilariously tentative steps they both took while sure that the other man was completely incapable of feeling anything for him.

By this time, I was growing used to this new Holmes with the ready laugh and fluid gestures. I suspect that both men’s inexperience made them equally tentative, astounded that they weren’t meant to be alone, and that close correspondence made them much less shocking together, in my eyes.

“The next I hear of Irene Adler I shall send her a postcard,” Holmes proclaimed with his hand twined in Bruno’s as we savored after-dinner drinks.

“Miss Adler?” I sat up with a start. “What has she to do with anything? I thought we decided she was moldering in some Spanish jail and the article promising an award for her whereabouts was to offset a diplomatic incident.”

“I rather suspect some sort of pressure—diplomatic or mechanical—has sprung her from that cage, and a difficult stay it must have been, so I shall shed no tears at her presumed freedom,” Holmes said.

“Did they announce it in the Spanish papers? Is that what you’ve been following in the foreign news?”

“We’ve been tracking her somewhat chastened path back across Europe,” Holmes said with a smile. “Her name hasn’t appeared, but I know her mark.” 

“She must know something about the Pope’s Medallions. We must locate her and stake a claim. If you are still inclined,” I said to Bruno.

“I am still very much inclined for the Roman cause,” Bruno said with that depth of feeling that always caught me off guard. “But I am of the opinion the Miss Adler understands our friend the detective very well, and as a result, Holmes paid a rather steep price for her escape.”

It suddenly struck me that the two men facing me were both equally comfortable in the deep waters of intrigue. Whereas I was totally at sea.

Sherlock Holmes explained, “I’ll never have proof until I ask her why she did it, but she was the person who told Bruno most specifically that he must travel to England to specifically ask my help.” 

“And she thought he might distract you while she disposed of the gems?” I asked.

“That’s one explanation, but I rather think that her extraordinary insight made her realize that the Italian priest of several unusual allegiances was the single person to kindle my affections.” 

“But he was a priest! Did she mean to serve you the torture of Tantalus?”

“Miss Adler may not have thought that far ahead. I do believe that from one student of human nature to another, she didn’t want to deprive me of this unique opportunity to learn how to love.”

My friend had always been unduly lenient towards the Adler woman, and I was unable to ascribe such higher motives to her. Then one last thing struck me. 

“Fa— Bruno, I’m quite sure that at our first meeting you said you didn’t know Irene Adler.”

“I do not.”

“He never met the woman, Watson. He saw her in the Spanish newspapers, certainly, but that was all.”

“But how was she to have divined you two would be compatible?” 

The taller man laughed and gave a nod to his dark companion. Bruno began to explain. “I never met the formidable Miss Adler, but she met me.” He halted my objections. “You must forgive me, but I did not realize I was in the same police station in Spain, both of us sitting in a long line of people being interrogated when and where Spanish justice would fall. No doubt I shared a room with many people charged with the most fascinating infractions, but on this worst night of my life, all I could think about was my own.

“It was only a matter of time before someone from the church came to take charge of the situation, but while they had me the officers were determined to ask me every filthy question you could imagine—and many of them I never had, I assure you—to let me know what they thought about a priest found kissing a man who—I was too innocent to realize did so professionally.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Everywhere, there are places where men go. As luck would have it, I went to my very first such destination on a night when it was raided by the police for immorality. Not that the police believed any of that, no matter how much I begged them to see that it was the first kiss in my life. The fact that I was a foreigner would mean immediate deportation.”

Holmes stepped in. “The public nature of Bruno’s single kiss had far more serious repercussions than he deserved, but for our purposes, think of an Irene Adler, waiting for her turn to be interrogated—something that would disturb her not at all—and she picks out the hapless priest in the middle of an international incident because of a kiss. And as she observed and she listened, something struck her about this man.”

“The next day I was released, with instructions to leave the country as quickly as possible. The day before I left, I received a note.” He withdrew it from his billfold and spread it before us. The words began in Italian with a few Spanish words mixed in, and then turned to English. The Italian read the entirety out loud for me in English:

“Dear Father,

“I can only hope that you find what you are seeking, which is sought by many but will require much fortitude for you, as I fear you have trials ahead before your goal.

“To that end, you must entrust yourself completely to a Mister Sherlock Holmes of 221 B Baker Street, London. He specializes in mysteries and has a wide knowledge of gems, and can help you only as much as you let him.

“—A sympathizer”

There was no other signature. The torn piece of rich paper was very crumpled, but a part of a monogram was visible. It could be the side of an ‘I’ or an ‘A,’ or an ‘L’ for that matter. 

“I assumed it was someone who wished to further our cause in Rome,” Bruno said. “Many found me in my travels.”

“That’s how I would have taken it,” I agreed. 

“She was in a terrible rush when she wrote this, Watson,” Holmes claimed. “Hence the mixture of languages, but Irene took time to write to a priest with whom she shared a night in a Spanish commissary. I have many examples of her hand at Baker Street if you doubt the resemblance.”

Bruno took down the remnants of their meal to the urchins who were guarding the door. While he was gone, Holmes said, “Thank you for coming, John. I know this has not been easy, and you have more questions. As Bruno and I see if we can live here together, you will often be with us either here or at Baker Street, which is still my preferred abode. We can work so many cases, the three of us!”

Bruno came back, shaking his head. “'What, no wine?’ the boy asked! They keep a sharp eye on what goes past them.”

“You see, dear Bruno, my idea of keeping the second bed was not a bad one.” Only now I spied a mattress underneath the piles of belongings not yet settled. “We’ll buy a frame tomorrow and make an effort to emphasize that we are two artists sharing a room with abundant natural light.”

“Do you wear a disguise, Bruno?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“Watson, what better painterly disguise than to be a genuine Italian?” 

“I have bought a very shabby coat,” Bruno said, leaping up to find it. “And this hat that covers my face, when worn just so.” With a careless posture, the rest of the trim young former priest was gone, and the Italian looked like a painter down on his luck. “Sherlock, show him the one you wore to the shops with me.”

The two men tried on various disguises for my benefit, cheerfully taking on the subterfuge necessary for criminals. 

I left them soon after to their bare attic room that was yet so warm, presided over by the curtained bed. 

A few days later I visited the attic once more. We were to begin our first case as a trio. A long-lost cousin had suddenly appeared to a family that had given him up for dead. Some family members accepted the newcomer was who he claimed to be, while others believed him to be an imposter. Because of a peculiarly written will, some family members benefited from this lost male relation, while others, of course, stood to lose. It sounded very straightforward, but I know Holmes felt everything to be more interesting simply because Bruno would be by his side.

“I’m glad I happened upon you when we could speak alone,” I began.

Holmes’ eyes regarded me with their usual cold exactitude.

“Do you see this as a lasting liaison?” I bolted out.

“Please, Watson, you sound like a maiden aunt trying to caution about the ways of the world.  
We fell off the map, Bruno and I, so I’m afraid I can’t sight where we’re going or measure how far we’ve gotten in that direction, but I can say the waters are tropical at the moment.”

My mouth worked at what I wished to say next.

“Will you stop mincing about and say it? You’re jabbering at the air like a lunatic. We’re men speaking of men, Watson, and you’re treating me as gingerly as a soufflé. I assure you I am made of stronger stuff and will not capsize if you poke me.”

“By my lights the only one who has lost his senses is you,” I said. He held my gaze. “Bruno is a fine chap, a very fine chap, but he strikes me as being such a complicated man it’s hard to know which end of him you’ve got a hold of.”

Holmes’ barking laugh surprised me. He had never been sensible to off-color implications before. “I mean, that I’m not sure why he’s here, even. Has he had the jewels all along and played you for a fool? Was he in cahoots with Irene Adler?”

“No, Watson,” my friend said patiently. “It was quite clear to me early on that this Dominican priest was unnaturally calm, even for a person trained in spiritual discipline, and his ability to calm his nerves is better than almost anyone I’ve ever met. ‘You’d make a fine criminal,’ I told him once, and I meant it. Let me give the rest of the explanation I owe you.”

I settled as well as I could against some cushions and waited expectantly.

“Yet I was immediately struck by the fact that Father Bruno was simultaneously undergoing a great personal crisis.” Holmes saw my furrowed brow. “The hair, Watson, the hair—surely you don’t think that even on the continent a priest would have such unruly hair? No, he was overdue for a haircut, and the one he’d had before was poorly done—it was uneven in places. As I stated the first night, he is usually exacting about his appearance, so this, plus the sorry state of his shoes, led me to believe that the crisis had happened a few weeks ago. 

“Even so, I began to think that the inner unrest had begun long before that. His cassock had signs of frequent starching and ironing, so that there were well-worn pleats showing against the black cloth in various places. But on top those whitish marks, there were new, more diffuse marks, leading me to think he—for I doubted a young priest would send his laundry out—that he had become much less careful in how he ironed and stinted on the starch. There was the remote possibility a housekeeper took to drink, but there was the hair, and another factor I will get to in a minute.

“So how was such a man so cheerful? The answer could only be that he had taken a step that had addressed the root of his disquiet, and he either felt himself to be—or truly was—outside of some danger. He possessed a case of documents proving the ownership of his necklace. And after all, his choice of reading material, Moliere, indicated that our visitor saw the absurd side of life and the contemplation of it made him weep, remember?”

My mind was on Holmes’ previous sentence about being out of danger. “You said he was quite sure the documentation for the necklace was correct.”

“As it was, Watson. You yourself helped prove that. Our investigation was to see where the jewels had landed.”

He waited patiently until I caught up.

“Bruno stole the jewels!”

Holmes nodded. “Yes, Bruno was, effectively, investigating himself. The Vatican had no way of knowing where their treasure had ended up, whether it had indeed turned up in Spain at all or if it was in the hands of several of our card players, as we put it that night. Irene Adler was a made-to-order red herring for that purpose. And yes, Rome did authorize him to employ my services.” 

He opened his pocket-book to reveal an uncashed check from some obscure church office. “I kept it as a souvenir because few ever see a check from this far up in the Vatican. Bruno insisted upon paying me weekly, knowing full well he might be dismissed at any time, but I refused any further payment after I realized my interests were far from professional.”

My mind was on the crime. “You told him you knew of his guilt?”

Holmes laughed shortly. “There was guilt aplenty for both of us. We spent an excruciating couple of weeks circling each other with the most unspeakable tension. I knew he didn’t need me to find the necklace, yet he stayed and played as if he did. Bruno had divined that I knew, and yet there I was continuing the charade as well. The most unsettling question stood unspoken between us: why? From the first evening I felt the most extraordinary sensation—that I would do literally anything to remain in his presence. And there he was, lingering for dinner and drinks and a very amusing discussion about the Donation of Pepin.”

“I’m quite sure he enjoyed it as much as we did,” I said encouragingly.

“I very much hoped that he found my company as agreeable as I did his,” Holmes said candidly, “But even then I knew my many charms were not enough to keep a train-weary man so engaged. And it was a bit of an insult that someone who very likely had absconded with a priceless antiquity was sitting so comfortably in Sherlock Holmes’ parlor as if he were untouchable!” 

I smiled inwardly at Holmes’ first experience of youthful infatuation coupled with his hardened deduction skills and a touch of vanity.

“It was an abominable time for me, Watson, because how does one say to any man, much less a priest, ‘Father, I have consistently experienced at least four of the seven signs of the male sexual response every time I’ve seen you’?”

The thought of a Sherlock Holmes earnestly studying my psychology books after his first tremblings of attraction was enough to prevent my laughter. Then I thought of Holmes turning away that night over the drinks table and imagined a look of utter confusion on his face that he would have been hard pressed to explain. 

“When I told him after one week I was no longer in his employ, the good priest waited very patiently for me to say I was going to denounce him to Rome. I have never encountered such a criminal, Watson, if that he is. Most people try to escape or blubber or try to justify their actions, but this man sat placidly as if nothing I could do would disorder some order he’d paid very dearly to attain.

“Then I said, ‘If the father will allow me, I will tell you what I know, and then we can come to terms with what I need not know.’

“‘You went to Spain to recover the treasure which your superiors rightly divined had come to light with the other gems from Torquemada’s cache. The church counts upon its mystery and prestige to make up for its current lack of terrestrial power, and so you, a vigorous young priest with a gift for languages and no small amount of physical strength arrived with the best of all possible weapons: the truth. Your documentation was incontrovertible, Father. You were to try and determine which player had those jewels and use your considerable persuasive power to give them to you. 

“‘Then you were sent away from Spain early, against your will, for a reason I beg you not to share with me.’ Bruno had assented in gratitude. ‘Your superiors had already been wired with the news of this catastrophe, and you subsequently sent a telegram telling them that being forced to leave early meant that your work was undone.

“‘Then, Father Bruno, you went home to be upbraided by your superiors for this incident that befell you in Spain. They were very displeased, but since you were already so involved, they put you back in the fray to work with a certain English detective you’d put forward as the best person to locate their treasure. And so you were sent to my door, asking me to find the person who had the jewels—that is, you. Since you had already lost nearly everything in the Spanish debacle, you didn’t expect it to be very difficult to tolerate with a brief, fruitless investigation on my part.

“‘It did not take me long, Father, to realize that my instincts from the first night were correct, and the Campari stain on the inside lining of your hand-case—the spill that had happened at the same time as your documents were nearly ruined—was from a bottle rupturing. Now, could you be so addicted to the stuff that you always carry your own bottle of it? For I can scarcely imagine any other way for it to so thoroughly soak the inside of your case unless you had a bottle inside. No, I watched you drink this Italian liquor, and you were appreciative, no more than that, as I have since watched you consume several types of alcohol with no sign of excess.’”

“What is your obsession with this Campari, Holmes?” I demanded then.

The detective continued implacably. “He carried a bottle with him—the picturesque Italian with the drink no non-Italian would ever touch—and placed the jewels inside. It was the medallion piece and several others of diamond, ruby, emerald and the like. ‘You poured out some of the liquid and inserted some bread up to the point of the label, so that it couldn’t be easily seen from the outside,’ I told him, ‘But the bread expanded and cushioned the jewels so that they did not clank so obviously. It was the bread I smelled in addition to the liquor on documents, though the inside of the case had been rubbed with some sort of soap that counteracted the smell.’ 

“You see, Watson, at some undetermined train stop along the way from Spain to Italy, one of the confederates in one of his secret societies—for he has several—was there to meet him to hand off the goods. 

“I told him, ‘At this point your precious bottle broke, though I’m not clear how.’

“‘The station near Toulouse was slippery with rain and there were only a few minutes to make the transfer. I fell and my case fell with me,’ our new friend confided to me. 

“I nodded and continued, ‘Your confrere was right there to pretend to help you rescue your documents, and the rest of the bottle was discarded while the jewels ended up in precisely the pocket you intended. An excellent result, one that lent you a calm so contagious my friend the doctor and I were quite charmed by you.’

“’I would have said you were deeply unsettled that evening, Mr. Holmes,’ Bruno then said to my surprise. ‘And as for me, I had no intention of distracting anyone from anything, as I was a man who had lost almost everything he had ever possessed, though I was proud to have served my mission and set the jewels to their appropriate purpose. The one detective capable of bringing down the punishment I knew I would receive sooner or later was making the most excellent jests from the midst of his untidy kingdom, and I wished—I still wish—not to leave,’ Bruno told me.

“’I would not have you leave, Father.’ I pushed the check he had tried to give me back across the table. And very foolishly I admitted, ‘I am receiving rich enough recompense.’”

It was difficult for me to think of this conversation between a then-priest and my wholly inexperienced friend, so I asked, “The two of you did spend quite a bit of time in the jeweller’s district—but why? You knew Bruno had already passed the gems to someone.”

“Do you really think my honor is such a fragile thing that it is to be burnt up by the first flames of attraction? No, no, Watson, we really were trying to find the very jewels Bruno had handed off to a confederate at a train station. I convinced him this was for the best—he would produce our excellent proof that the Vatican was their rightful owner, reclaim the very necklaces he had stolen for such noble reasons, give it to the Vatican as he had promised, and any moral debt would be discharged. We cared nothing about the pocketbook of the person who had bought gems with an irregular provenance.”

It made me feel better that Holmes had not merely accepted this fraud of Bruno’s, and yes, that we had been working together on a cause that was just.

“‘You are not going to turn me into the authorities?’ Bruno asked me then.

“’You haven’t tried to lay a hand on me yet,’ I told him.” Holmes guffawed at the expression on my face. 

“’And no,’ I said to the priest, ‘In your heart, you feel as though you accomplished your mission—you retrieved the church’s property and you handed it to her representative. That there are others in your church who do not recognize this schismatic movement as genuine is far beyond my agnostic understanding, Father. For all I know your sect is the true one and the others are the heretics, I find myself curiously unable to make moral judgments of late.’

“Then I hope you will not mind to hear this part, Watson. The priest grazed my hand with his fingertips and I felt a thrill to the roots of my hair. ‘Then we are of one mind,’ he said. ‘I do belong to several groups working to regain the church’s authority on the earth, but also to shape this authority in the more gentle face of the Savior of the Gospel, without certain deformations that have unfortunately been passed down along with our faith.’

“His hand still touched mine, and he gazed at me with those queer oceanic eyes of his, green-gray at the moment. ‘I don’t pretend to understand what I am, but I know that you are the mate I should wish for, if such a thing were ever allowed me on any corner of the earth.’ 

“The words caused me an unhoped-for happiness. ‘I would like nothing better than to spend time knowing you, Mr. Holmes, whatever time is left until Rome tires of this gambit and calls me back for some other purpose. That my career is for all purposes over after Spain you can doubtless imagine, but for those of my sect I am still one of the most highly placed in the Vatican and this is a tremendous advantage while it lasts.’

“‘If you don’t agree with them, and they despise you, why stay in the church?’ I asked what I had promised myself I wouldn’t.

“’My dear Holmes,’ Bruno said. ‘What I feel for the church is a love, as surely as what I would feel for a man, should I ever be allowed to offer such a thing. I know nothing of this last kind of love,’ he looked at me shyly, ‘But perhaps we will be granted the time to foresee whether they would be so dissimilar or not. And then, Holmes, you are free to find such a thing with someone who is also free.’”

Holmes turned to me with a wry smile. “A highly theoretical liaison that is, as you know, exceedingly unlikely, Watson. Once the idea of Bruno had forced its way into this forgotten closet inside me, I can’t imagine anyone else finding it, much less fitting inside.”

I was still not reconciled to the idea that Holmes had such a closet. He must have divined my doubts.

“Oh do, go on Watson. What else remains unclear?”

“And so when he told you that day on the street he’d had word from Rome—”

“It was the news I’d been dreading, yes. Awkward half-confidences were more than I’d ever had with anyone, and I did not wish to lose them. It’s still rather awkward, how happily I took the news of his defrocking. It delivered Bruno into my arms, but he is devastated at the loss of his way of life. I shall simply have to let him find his way—”

There was a noise at the door and then Bruno came in fumbling with packages.

“We shall have fine antipasti with no pasta, as sadly I have discovered it is very hard to cook more than one thing at a time on that thing—” the Italian indicated the alcohol stove. 

He opened the parcels on a rickety table. “We have a cold feast: fish, meat, vegetables—” 

He began unpacking the items and Holmes went over to him. “Watson has pledged to stop being nervous about us.” Holmes kissed his lover full on the mouth and I flinched once more. “Remember, Watson, no lady’s honor has been insulted, no one has been exploited and your sensibilities can go back to being unruffled.” 

Bruno gave a clever grin. “I think rather it is you who gets ruffled by Watson, Sherlock, as I recall you avoided him from the second week we knew each other. And you later told me—‘I can’t see Watson—he’ll know by looking at my face!’” 

The former priest smiled at me and we laughed at Holmes’ expense, who shrunk a little in the face of our united front—a new experience for us both.

The Italian put his arm around the taller man and led him to the curtained bed, whence they shortly emerged with still more pillows and blankets.

We spread out our picnic on a coverlet and nothing could be easier than to be carried along by these two fascinating men who were fascinated with each other. 

After their first few days together, I learned that the men avoided the signaled section of town, preferring to cultivate the image that Holmes’ painter persona had a very close friend vising from Italy. Artists were all a strange breed, weren’t they? 

They solved cases together. (A certain issue involving a French diplomat engaged both their considerable talents and earned Homes a medal.) Bruno tutored some people in languages. And then he went off on his errands that Holmes filed under things about which he wouldn’t stoop to inquire.

I was amused to discover that Holmes sometimes attended daily Mass with Bruno, in a series of disguises, sitting as far apart as possible. Holmes told me once that he was so happy to share his life with his friend, he would deny Bruno nothing he asked in return.

For the next eight months, Sherlock Holmes was the happiest man in London. His Bruno had many times proved himself an admirable collaborator in investigating, and the three of us kept excellent company. The great detective had everything he’d always had, but heightened, made richer and more complete by the addition of the right someone. 

He was careful not to spend every night in their attic, and Bruno also rented a small room from one of the women married into his priest network. She knew the room was just for show, and appreciated the extra money, and that was that, most days of the week. 

We all engaged in a delicate dance when it came to Baker Street, however. Holmes made no attempt to change who he was—he never had—and Bruno would come by for planning sessions that occasionally turned to suppers. The third to our trio always left by an early hour, and the two men kept a scrupulous distance while under Mrs. Hudson’s roof.

The old woman was no fool, and anyone with eyes could see the venerable Holmesian mask drop when he came inside and his happiness was allowed out, albeit under a strict decorum.

My theory was that she might not have minded the couple to be less chary in her presence, but she appreciated the deep affection that underlay Holmes’ determination to do nothing to sully her good name. 

And then one day I came back to Baker Street to a Holmes who had surely been at the needle. It had been so long that I thought this vice extirpated for good. 

His eyes dared me to lecture him, but I did not.

Then all was fine once more. We three had a supper in one of those specialized establishments where I had been accepted as a friend to two vetted individuals, and all was well in the world. 

It took about a month. One month and four more letters from Rome, with an injection to help Holmes through each ordeal. 

One Wednesday morning, I showed up at the sect’s club under the dressmaker’s shop. “Where are you sending him, and why does it have to be him?” I wanted to know.

Father Enoch ushered me inside. “You don’t understand. We expect no one to do anything except what his conscience tells him.” 

“Then what are these letters from Rome? Each one takes something from my friend.”

The priest before me spread out his hands. “Father Bruno follows his own path. We still consider him a priest, you see. He comes from generations of men loyal to the pope, and he had long been a part of the intrigue brewing to wrest some land back from Italy. Our group, we’re much more about converting minds to our way of thinking. We’re preachers, not soldiers.” 

The quiet force in Bruno’s voice when he discussed taking back some of the papal holdings came back to me. It suddenly sounded utterly distinct from the traces of the “utrimque” fellowship I could also discern in him. “You should have warned me. I wouldn’t have been so congenial with this man, if he only came to shatter Holmes’ dreams.”

“We had all prayed that Bruno would find a home and true affection to be a solace, as many of us have,” the man said mildly.

“Sherlock Holmes already had a home,” I retorted. “He’s gone back to drugs, I’ll have you know.”

“Each of us has paid dearly for the sake of the life we think is most fitting, Doctor. Your Mr. Holmes is a staunch one and may prove up to the challenge.”

A new woman, of about his age, came in with coffee and cake, but I could only glower at these people’s placidity in the face of likely disaster for my dear friend. 

I stood up and left hurriedly, knowing that I was berating a man who was not at all responsible for Giuseppe Maria Bruno’s behavior.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shattered Holmes puts himself together again with the help of his stalwart friend, Watson. We gain insight into Holmes' relationship and the mark it leaves upon him.

Holmes sat in the parlor looking out the window for several days. Only once did he speak.

“You knew, didn’t you?”

“That your affection had very quickly become worthy of the word love? Yes.”

His gave me a look full of scorn. “That he would leave.”

“I knew he gave you no promises,” I evaded. 

“What promises were there for us to give? They don’t exist for us, Watson, don’t toy with me now with promises of a map upon which to plot my unhappiness. You knew I would somehow not be up to the challenge. That was why you gave such a start every time we laid our hand on each other. Not prudishness.”

“If it hurts a great deal, then you’re doing it properly, old man,” I murmured. “And yes, I grew to think that it was not mere discomfort that made it so difficult to witness your intimacy. In some part of myself I knew—he’s a revolutionary, Holmes. It’s a breed you can find all over Europe, fighting for various causes. In his case, his heart beats for church and country which are one and the same. and I worried that Bruno would decide that his first love, the church, was stronger than his desire to be a full man with you.”

My friend’s face went dead. He stared out onto the street.

“Has he broken it off definitively?” I finally dared to ask. “Perhaps he needs some time in Rome, and he will be back. There is probably little left for him there, but then, after all, what is London to him? It was not his choice of homes.”

“I would have gone anywhere he asked. What is London to me now?” and my friend lapsed into silence.

Several days later Holmes sat staring at his morning egg as if it were the nucleus of all evil and he were merely deciding how he would obliterate it. 

I was eating my own and reading the paper, when Holmes said, without looking up from the egg, “Mycroft has sent a dog cart.”

In due course the hooves stopped their clattering under our window.

“How on earth?” I asked, glad to see him prognosticating again.

“Because his letter mixed in with the post is addressed to you in his crab-like penmanship.” I snatched it up while he brought his packed bags from his room.

By the time I had come to an end of it, there was a knock at the door. Holmes had his hat, coat, stick and the traveling-case was in his hand when Mrs. Hudson entered all in a fluster.

“The driver outside has come to collect you, Mr. Holmes, but he was most high-handed when I asked who he sent him or where he might intend to take you.”

“Mrs. Hudson, never fear, it is my brother’s doing. I ask you both to put your trust in him as I always have.” In obedience to this direction, I stood there at the window watching him get in the vehicle and drive off.

The landlady sniffed. She told me once she realized she got the lesser of two evils with Holmes as her tenant, and consoled herself, “At least it’s not Mycroft!” every time she was vexed by the Holmes she was charged with.

These days I asked few questions of my friend, and moreover, his brother’s letter forbade it. The text had been sparse, as befitted a man who tolerated no discussion:

“Sherlock will be taking a rest in an unnamed establishment in France. Please know that it is the best and you have nothing to worry about, Dr. Watson. They will send him home at the opportune moment. – Mycroft.”

Somewhat dazed, I read the letter over again while finishing my now-solitary breakfast. Holmes’ normal state of mind fluctuated wildly from melancholy that prostrated him to the point of inanition, to avoiding sleep and food for days when focusing on a problem. Not this pattern, nor his brother’s wild lifestyle, the risks Holmes took and his commerce with thieves and murderers, not to mention the drugs—none of that had ever been reason enough for Mycroft to send his younger brother to a sanatorium. But love, that faculty which surely had missed the elder Holmes altogether, was cause to abscond with Sherlock without telling the latter or myself the destination.

There were only three institutions in France I would qualify as the best. I wrote to each of them, saying I had a patient who was distraught over the loss of a lover of an inconvenient persuasion. What sort of treatment would they offer, should I send him there? Each of the three wrote back with a programme involving standard rest and proper diet, in addition to some of the more experimental free association and hypnotic techniques, assuring me that in any case my patient will be assured the most complete confidentiality and understanding. 

One physician from a spa in Nantes said he was making a special study of such cases, which were by no means as rare as some would think. It was to this sanatorium I hoped Holmes had been sent, and nine weeks later, the man himself was standing over my bed in the middle of the night to confirm it.

“Nantes had nothing more for me.” The calm voice started me awake.

“My good man. I am overjoyed to see you,” I said, peering into the dark. “It was truly a restful time for you, I hope?”

My eyes could now discern a face that was neither that of the old Holmes, with his many faces, nor the one he wore with Bruno. It was some other thing altogether, and I found nothing to either comfort or concern me in it, thus far.

“Forgive me, Watson. As part of my cure I have been so busy writing all these weeks that I could not write you until it was all done. And by then they said I could leave. You should go back to bed and we can talk at length in the morning. I merely wished to assure us both that I am still myself, and you, yourself.”

When I woke up again the next morning, there was a book by my bedside. It was a handsomely bound large leather volume, but when I looked closely, I saw the long edges of the pages had been tinted with red ink. A “red-letter” case is what we would call it. This was the way Holmes and I distinguished our records that could not be released to the public, and in most cases, ought to be kept under lock and key, else confidences come out and cases are forced back open. 

Intrigued, I began reading. 

“The Case of the Second Slipper” had been inscribed at the top in a purplish ink written with a strong hand, but the first third of the book had been scratched out with a disorderly and uneven script, scarcely recognizable as Holmes’ legendarily bad writing. I struggled through the first few pages, finding them even more disjointed collections of thoughts than the detective’s usual shorthand. They were bits floating in the air after an explosion, I grasped, and began to make some sense of them when I heard a thump in the next room. 

A few minutes later when I emerged dressed, there was my friend with several enormous piles of paper surrounding him. He looked very thin, but there was still a pulse of life left, I fancied.

“I had thought that when I put our records in some kind of order, we can send the latest red-letter volumes to the bank, and review those in safe-keeping to see if some have passed the threat of any scandal.” He looked around the room. “It will take some time, no doubt,” and went back to sorting.

In this way, my friend told me that he did indeed share the journal of his most intimate sorrows with me, and I should take my time reviewing it, though we may never discuss the matter. 

While Holmes had been away, I had ample time to compile my own account of this chapter in his life, but this new information made it more complete, I did make a point of perusing the volume in front of him while taking notes in my well-advanced notebook, and he made no objection. With time, it seemed to me that Holmes shifted only a few papers every day, giving me time to read his ramblings and then re-form them into some kind of sense to complete the chronicle I had started to make sense of the mysterious priest. 

When I was finally done, I daubed the ends of my own journal with red ink, and presented the two volumes to Holmes.

“Capital, Doctor. Today is a fine day to stop by the bank and then have a luncheon of good, strong English food, which is now a delicacy to me.”

Together, we boxed up our most sensitive records, took the dog-cart to Cox & Co. Bank, opened up the tin box labeled “John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army,” and spent some time looking over the records that had been languishing in the darkness of the vault. We found a few dealing with people who had since died or been exonerated, and these I took, while Holmes shut our new contributions in without a second look.

With several volumes under our arms, Holmes and I strolled to his chosen dining place. I felt his decision was wise: we both returned to the usual rhythms of our friendship during that meal, and I was able to put out of my mind the painful disappointment that had partly driven my friend out of his senses for a short time. 

I will not share with you the occasion for releasing this new batch of records, or why the reddest of the red-letter cases was included. Whosoever shall read this singular chronicle from the life of Sherlock Holmes will find a fragment selected from the man’s rest-cure notes, as well as two addenda from me.

\---------

August 15, Nantes

This writing-cure offends my scientific sensibilities, but there is nothing else to do except fill these accusingly blank pages.

After several attempts, I know how to explain what happened. Or rather, certain guideposts to my ruination.

At first I thought it was the onset of a sudden illness. After all, my habits are none too salutary. And I had no reason to think I should ever use the word “fever” to describe anything except an increase in body temperature.

Usually in interviews I find myself having to soften my voice into a murmur, or else huff and puff and act the part of the harsh inquisitor, for those who respond best to these postures. 

The first inkling was when, within 15 minutes of meeting this visitor, I realized I’d not once assumed a role. For 15 minutes, I had been merely myself. 

This put me on alert. The rhythms of my thought felt slightly different on that fateful evening.

As the night wore on, the fever had begun to migrate. It was the merest smolder, but it took all I could do to not run away with some books and understand what was happening to me.

The man was clearly not who he said he was, but he was no mere impostor, either.

At first this malady was a challenge, another puzzle to be solved. It was even preferable for me to think that my overweening interest in the man was some delayed piety that had surfaced without precedent in my attitude. For no man could wish himself in my singular intersection of the holy and the profane, with no outlet therefrom.

\-----

August 20

When we had run the gauntlet in London’s lowest sectors and gained entrance into the hotel that fateful night, it seemed accomplishment enough.

“How can I forget that you still bear the scent of incense about you?” I asked him, rather than ask what two men may get up to together.

He already had his jacket off and unfastened several buttons at his neck. 

“You’re very brown,” I said with some surprise. “Do you sunbathe?”

“A priest could hardly lounge about on the beach,” he laughed, “But I do swim.”

I sat up so quickly I almost toppled him off the bed, and to keep him there I caught him in my arms. “I would have thought that a priest couldn’t do such a thing. On a public beach?”

Bruno laughed, delighted at having finally caught me in a stereotype about men of the cloth. “We don’t take a vow against swimming,” he said, winding his arms around my waist, something that would be forbidden us in most circles by an implicit vow separating man from man. 

We paused that way for a moment and found the posture suited us. The rolling voice continued talking.

“For the top clergy at the Vatican, the authorities close off the beach so they can swim in peace. No one minds—after all, the sea is one of the Father’s most wondrous creations, and no Italian will begrudge a cardinal this kind of intimacy. Me, I took off my collar and swam when I liked—usually very early to avoid any talk, but no one ever paid any attention.”

“That I doubt very much,” I murmured with his hand in my hair.

“You do not understand the Italian psychology. Everyone loves the sea, as is natural for a country blessed with so much coast as mine,” Bruno said with a touch of pride.

“Yes, the peninsula is a favored formation,” I said with some bravado as I dared one finger towards him to trace the formation he possessed as I did. 

His mouth closed on mine and we remained joined while I removed his shirt. His body was so different than mine, browner, yes, but every inch from neck to wrist was covered with abundant dark, curly hair. 

“You have a hair shirt,” I quipped with a dry throat, referring to the instruments of self-torture monks supposedly used for discipline at one time—perhaps to prevent exactly what we were doing together.

The Italian drew back. “I have always believed that the flesh produces enough mortifications of its own. Mine only started to trouble me recently. Very recently.”

He smiled flirtatiously, as if the magnetism we had fought for weeks was the most natural thing in the world. 

The narrow hotel bed seemed to grow with our inventiveness. Soon there was not a man of the cloth because there was no fabric nor falsehood between us. We lay down together, our legs intertwined.

“May I tell you something?” he asked very nervously, as if there were any room for shame at that moment.

“Yes, of course.”

“I write poetry. I have for years without thinking anything of it except to hide it.”

I didn’t know quite what to think of this revelation imparted at that critical moment. 

“Oh?”

Bruno said many things during that wordless sojourn in the hotel. He took to it as naturally as swimming and drew me into the depths with him. Since he had no more experience than I, it must have been his poet’s nature that led him to the warmest coves, though I was not to be left behind.

When it was over, I managed, “Bruno?” 

The word hovered in the air like a dewdrop. I suddenly understood that I was looking at the reflection of my entire self in that one name, that from now on the world would be contained in those five letters. 

It was terrifying. And I heard my own terror spreading around the room.

“Yes, Holmes.”

It wasn’t a question from that accented voice. It was an all-purpose affirmation, for any question that might be troubling the man in his arms at this time. Bruno turned me around so we were facing each other.

“I liked this very well,” I began again, playing with the curls at the nape of his neck, ”So well that I should strongly object to anyone finding out about it. Not because I have regrets, but because I would not like this changed.” 

“I am not sorry. Even if it never happens again—well, I would be sorry,” he smiled, “But no, I am not ashamed.” His mouth was hot and vagrant and then he resumed more calmly:

“I would say that this wonderful thing that we have cannot be changed, but even my one sinful kiss had some truth to it, and that was utterly spoiled by the chaos and interrogation that came after.”

That one kiss in Spain separated us. I went very still.

“You see, I have come to think that the young man who gave me up to the police, he offered a necessary kind of sacrament to men like me, who were helpless to understand themselves without it.”

Bruno laughed. “In my case it was a literal confession. This young man sat there listening for an hour to this recitation of hidden lusts that I had been mostly unaware of my mind collecting until very shortly before that night. When he kissed me—” Bruno caught the look of pain on my face and ran a hand down my chest, “Amato, it was nothing like us, but he gave me a knowledge that changed me completely. I’m not even angry with him for buying his own freedom with my reputation after the authorities came to that shadowy place. Because I’ve come to believe that even with that action, he was imparting a truth: the truth of my place in society, which was to never be sure about anything, now that I was sure what made my blood move.”

The mouth that fascinated me broke off and spent some minutes wiping away my jealousy. 

“Holmes?” he said afterwards. “Sherlock?”

“Yes, Bruno.”

His eyes were very wide and dark, with almost none of their usual green. “Many times since I joined the ‘Utrimque,’ I have dreamed of what it would be like to be myself, and with someone, like the other priests who have taken someone to be by their side. If such a thing were possible in our case, in some fantastic world, would it be a life you could accept for me? That is, I wouldn’t ask you to profess something you didn’t believe, but would you come, from time to time?”

“To one of your celebrations?” The idea seemed so ridiculous that I feared I would laugh, but I was suddenly very moved that this neighboring continent of skin would ask me to Mass. “Anywhere you would invite me, I would surely be honored to attend.” And I whispered the first endearment of my life. “If you were to ask me to accompany you for Matins tomorrow, I would proudly don my best disguise and sit by while you exercise a faith I cannot fathom.”

He seemed to have shrunk in my arms. “I do not understand what I am to do now,” Bruno whispered, “But I like thinking you might be there, from time to time.”

I was there more than Bruno ever knew. I would not insult him by divining all of his business, only that he did maintain contacts with a diverse set of people of various nationalities. Far from being jealous of these meetings, all I wished to determine was that this man who was in some sense mine was constructing a life with its nucleus in London. That he might occasionally travel bothered me not at all, as long as he should center himself here with me, that we might continue our mutual observation of this experiment upon each other.

Now I am left, utterly changed, a specimen of a new species that must never be named or exposed to the light of day. It was not a transformation I thought to bear alone, and it ought to mean little, now that I am alone again forever. 

How I long to see Watson and ask him whether I am still myself!

\----

This note I’ve slipped in at the end of our case-books because it occurred to me that I never explained the reason for Holmes’ title, nor one other crucial factor.

First, the reader may be wondering, as I did, why Holmes took his romance to Treacher’s establishment at all. The only reason I found out was because I was suggesting ways out of this anguish that was consuming my friend without his lover.

It was a most ungentlemanly thing to say, but I did tell Holmes, “You needn’t be alone if you don’t wish to. Why don’t you go see Madam Yvette, who seems to understand you?”

This earned me a withering glance.

“Surely you don’t wish me to spend my days haunting the Treacher’s of the world.”

Then my long-swallowed question burst out: “Why on earth would you take Bruno to Treacher’s, Holmes? Couldn’t you go to one of your rooms around town?”

This brought some life to him. “On short notice? I had no real bed! Take me for what you will—I’m not going to subject someone to that experience on any number of my pallets on the floor! Or have myself subjected. We’re not animals and won’t behave as if we are.”

His eyes scanned my face. “And I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I buy a bed in that afternoon after I knew about Bruno’s letter. Because the idea occurred to me, but think, man—it sends entirely the wrong message, you must agree. Altogether too presumptuous. If the roles were reversed, I should have been repulsed by an obviously new bed waiting eagerly in the corner of my hovel, ready to consume its offering. Try to imagine how grotesque it would have been, Watson.”

I did try, but the sort of propriety to which I was accustomed had clear rules that had been drummed into me since birth. 

Holmes continued, “So I was left to keep faltering along as we had, and see if we faltered rather more purposefully that night towards a hotel.” 

He spoke to me intently: “For Watson, almost anything can be accomplished anywhere, but I trust the anonymity of these networks run by men who require that same anonymity, more than the most famously discreet five-star hotel. One more extravagant rumor about me shouldn’t hurt, but I have heard of several blackmail attempts because of chambermaids and porters seeing someone sneaking into the wrong room.”

He sank back down and began the process of becoming one with his chair.

“Besides, they send you where there is a safe haven that evening. We could have ended up at the Ritz.” 

As for the title, that leads us to a less comic interlude. 

One day, not too long after they had cemented their liaison, the two men were back at Baker Street while we discussed a case. 

Bruno was watching Holmes retrieve some tobacco from the toe of the Persian slipper which he so Bohemianly used for that purpose. 

“Why do you use that?” the Italian asked.

The detective smiled and launched into some tale of a fire at the harem of some sultan, and how a silver bracelet had been hidden in the curving toe of the slipper and not discovered by authorities until the slipper was safely out of the country.

“Yes, yes,” Bruno interrupted impatiently, “But what of the other one?”

“The other one? There is only one slipper rescued from the harem fire,” Holmes said.

“How often is one shoe made without another, detective?” the other man teased. “No, no, such things have always been important to me, I will tell you why.

“When I was a young child of about five, we went to the seaside and suddenly a storm came. In the excitement of gathering our belongings and one very active little boy, my parents left behind one of my shoes.

“When we arrived home and the loss was discovered, it horrified me—the one shoe I retained seemed forlorn, ugly, even. I hated it but I would not abandon it either.”

Our storyteller paused as if to ascertain that we were listening to such a simple tale. Naturally, the trivial always held a great fascination for Holmes, and I enjoyed listening to our new friend’s stories. He continued:

“This was the point in life when I began to pray. It seems a slight thing to launch the career of a priest—perhaps you would say too slight, looking at my failure in that area.” 

Holmes laid a hand briefly on his arm.

“But children see the entire world in a trifle, and any person only sees a small sliver of what the divine comprehends, so I feel no shame that my life as a penitent started with the loss of my shoe. 

“My mother, who was a wonderful woman, encouraged me not only to think about the shoe that attained a special place before my statue of the Madonna, but of the one that had doubtless been swallowed by the tide. She told me stories of the second shoe visiting with the fishes, or of being picked up by sailors and taken to strange lands. 

“Still, I felt as though the real business was to be done with the Blessed Virgin and the rest of the pantheon that soon collected at my bedside altar to help watch over the shoe that waited to be reunited with its mate.

“I was just a child, but the concept I struggled with was real. This trivial incident was my first idea that the world was broken. And that it, my shoes, that many broken things, could not be mended by human hands. 

“As I grew older, the shoe was put aside like all childish fancies, but the quest it had instilled in me had a place assured for me in the seminary at an early age. 

“I was only reminded of the shoe when my middle brother died. I was comforting my mother as best I could after this second loss so soon after my youngest brother. 

“’If Pietro or Gianni had a child, one child, it would be enough,’ she sobbed.

“’It was a tragedy to lose both of them so close together, Mama,’ I whispered.

“She turned on me with a sudden fervor. ‘You are the only shoe I have left. By the Virgin, there will be no more!’”

“’The Lord makes whole that which is not whole—you told me so yourself, mother, long ago.’ I told her.

“And then she cursed the God that would deny her a grandchild. I was in shock. My mother, my gentle mother, began screaming obscenities at me, and she continued to do so from the funeral I helped officiate and for some time after.

“My mother would not look at me until my father suggested that I visit her without a priest’s clothes. You see, he had determined that my mother was not angry at me, but at the priestly role that had made me different, rendered me unable to have children.

“Then I was horrified to find out that when she did talk to me, my Mama spoke no sense. She retreated into a world where she did have grandchildren. They had different names depending on the day, and no one could approach her without first greeting the children my dead brothers would never have. 

“Most of the time she seemed well enough to cook and carry on with the house, but my father was in anguish over her transformation. The doctors could do nothing for her except offer to take her away. And that’s how they lived until three years ago, when my mother must have gotten distracted while cooking. There was a fire and my father died trying to save her. She had albums made of pictures she had torn from the newspaper, pictures of babies and little children, and these, along with baby clothes belonging to my brother and me, christening dresses and the like. I can imagine she wouldn’t leave the house without all of them.”

Bruno looked at our intent faces. He resumed, “And so you see, Sherlock, whenever I see one half of a pair like that, I think about how it is alone, without the other, its mate, and I see the whole world.”

It was a very moving speech, even more so than other fanciful stories the Italian told from time to time. Usually I thought how the loss of his priestly role had deprived the world of an outstanding preacher and him of his flock. This time, it was not difficult to see in the allegory of the shoe a heart yearning for its match. These two utterly irreconcilable sides existed within the gentle Bruno, who was all peace and little conflict. 

As always, I gave a little glance in Holmes’ direction, expecting to find the studiously respectful expression indicating he could not follow Bruno to this spiritual realm, but he would never try to hold his lover from it. 

On this occasion, I just caught a strange expression on his face before he leaned over and kissed Bruno—one of the only times he broke his self-imposed rule in Mrs. Hudson’s house. 

At that moment, I thought he was especially moved by the retelling of this family tragedy that had obviously marked Bruno very deeply, ultimately pushing the priest to find some way to resolve his mother’s hopes for grandchildren with his vocation.

But now, when I look back at that occasion, I am able to see a morbid fear on Holmes’ face right before he distracted from it by the kiss. In his eyes I can now see a terror before the irreplaceable. This man who had fallen into his life, he was not like one case that could be substituted by another, one mental puzzle to be solved and set aside. 

Even Holmes’ ultimate adversary, Irene Adler, had given way to this criminal—the one with whom he committed a crime every night—who was now the only thing in Holmes’ field of vision. 

This expression must have been what won Madam Yvette her 50 pounds. What earned the couple a chit from Treacher, good for a few moments of privacy in a complicit hotel. 

Holmes went back to the madam’s after I told him of the wager. I know that he must have used his considerable dossier on her questionable ethics to impress upon her the need for utter secrecy on his intimate matters.

He also brought back a few pounds which he claimed from her as his share in the matter. We toasted to the madam’s health, intoxicated as we all were with the promise of those happy days. 

I had never thought of the great sleuth as wanting anything, but he looked different to me after his affair ended. Holmes finally had his other shoe—because there was no other half but one, every shoe with its one mate that had been worn together with the other.

At some point, Holmes must have known that he would be the slipper left behind. And he had no belief in an ordering divinity to make him whole again, or at least soothe the hurt. 

And now that Bruno is gone, anyone else will see the same piquant Holmes, the eccentric, the genius with an unending store of anecdotes about great escapes and espionage. But as his close friend, I see a very different story in the fact that there is an empty space at his side. How he lives with this missing half is his own reckoning with the world, his own attempt to be whole as a shattered thing. 

He remarked to me once after returning from Nantes, “The only thing more grotesque than a man of my age learning how to love, and how he loves, was developing affection for a man of the cloth who prefers the church that has ejected him. It’s like being abandoned by a man who returns to his wife who has married another.”

It was a new form of self-deprecation for my friend, and I would come to hear it more often. Something about this affair made him see himself from the outside, and he saw only a caricature. It was as if the post mortem of failures he set up when at his lowest points now included himself. It was terrible to watch.

But then in his temperate days he was milder than ever. He would get caught up in a new case, and I would catch his sidelong glance right in the middle of the interview he was conducting. “How is my performance?” it seemed like some days. Other times he seemed to be very happy to be delivering the great detective’s part on cue, and was reassuring me how much he was enjoying himself.

Either way it was wrenching.

To avoid being the yardstick for my friend’s resignation, I took on more patients for some time. Though of course, I returned to his side to chronicle many more cases of the great Sherlock Holmes. 

How he reached some sort of accord with himself, and with me, I leave for another time. For now, gentle reader, I ask your indulgence for a man whose unflinching service to the truth included suffering knowledge he neither sought nor shirked about himself.


End file.
